Valkwitch (The Valkwitch Saga Book 1) (39 page)

Tyrissa knelt in front of a circle of wildly
shaped rock, forged by Settan’s touch into a chaotic field of shapes, spines,
and sinkholes, the topography of an entire nation rendered in miniature. The
riftwinds flowed around her, seeping through her skin, flashing into the
strength of stone. At this point she could almost call the process comfortable.
As usual, the air of the Rift was warmer than the surface looming a thousand
feet above.

“Flatten it,” Settan said.

This had become the normal opening exercise of
their recent sessions. Tyrissa placed her palms on the ground and let two
currents of earth magick flow through her arms and into the stone. She could
feel the thousands of varied corners and spikes in the circle. Their jagged
chaos was a cloud of sensation in her mind, a thin icing on top of the vast and
steady presence of the plateau below. Letting the earthen energy flow outward,
she willed for it to become smooth, to create order from chaos one disruption
at a time. Two slow ripples in the stone expanded out from her hands and the
rubble melted back into the whole, erasing that varied geography. After a
minute, the circle was flat, with no evidence it was ever anything but. Tyrissa
smiled to herself, raising her hands from the stone and wiping the sweat from
her forehead. She sat back in exhaustion, feeling briefly hollow. Her skin
tingled from absorbing the riftwinds, the transmutation process unceasing, and the
earthen core bloomed from nothing once again.

“Good. You’re improving,” her mentor said.

Settan looked years younger than when she first
met him, as if their regular sessions in the Rift had restored him and smoothed
away the cracks and crags. Tyrissa was glad that she was able to squeeze in one
last session with him. Difficult as it sometimes was, it was also relaxing, a
way to clear her mind.

Tyrissa gazed out across the Rift, eyes tracing
the white and gray strata of the soaring cliff walls. All of it was created in
a single stroke of magick run wild, an unhealable scar.

“Strange that the Shapers Circle would be based
here, right on the shore of an air domain,” she said, both fishing for anything
Settan felt like sharing and filling the time as she regained her stores of earthen
magick.

“The Rift is not an air domain,” Settan replied,
taking the bait. “Not exactly. Perhaps it would have been had the Ten Brothers
not been created to stop the Rift’s growth. It is a… downstream effect of the
Hithian Crater, which is a true air domain. The Khalanheim Circle considered
moving after the Fall, especially since the city was split in half, ruined.
They choose to stay, as we had a connection to this area long before the Fall
and the Rift.”

“A connection? Do you mean there’s an earth domain
down there?”

She knew she was pushing it a little far with
that and Settan looked at not as a teacher to student, by as one element to
another. As a potential rival, as the bear regards the wolf.

“What harm is there in telling me? You’re free,
right?”

“The conditioning from twenty-seven years of
loyalty isn’t so easily forgotten. Since I still have the Earth’s blessing, I
feel I must keep some secrets. I owe the Circle that much, if nothing else.”

He still felt a residual pull from his Pact, even
when severed from it. Tyrissa nodded and felt slightly guilty over using every
Pactbound she encountered as a subject to study. However, if what Giroon told
her was true, she would need that knowledge. While she told Settan about their
fight with Vralin deep beneath the city, she held back the revelation from
Giroon’s research. She thought it better to leave him ignorant of that.
Everyone needs a few secrets, after all.

“Enough talk,” Settan said after another stretch
of silence. “Are you ready?”

Tyrissa felt a solid weight of earth in her and nodded.

Settan motioned at the cleared space in front of her
and said, “Make a cube.”

Tyrissa placed her hands into the practice circle,
and again sent in two currents of magick into the ground. She thought of
Shaping as an inverse of the smoothing exercise and tried that in reverse. The
rock rose and began to take shape, only to melt back into the whole with only a
few pebbles for her effort. After three failures in a row Tyrissa slapped the
ground in frustration.

“The simplest shape. Try again. Hold. Form.
Loose. Find the essence of the stone. The unifying rhythm.”

She replaced her hands and mentally dug down
through the ground, focusing in on the subtle thrum of potential in the stone
and the echo of that rhythm in stored magicks within her. Again the rock
fluidly rose from the whole of the plateau and gathered into a shape between
her planted hands. This time it held together, a six-inch cube of gray rock.
Tyrissa sat back, satisfied.

“It’s no guild hall or mine tunnel, but I’ll take
it,” she said, smiling at Settan.

Settan stepped over to the little stone cube and nudged
it with his bare foot. He frowned as it crumbled to pieces, though Tyrissa
wasn’t surprised her creation’s poor quality.

“Hard to judge, since you are no true Shaper. This
might be remarkable for one such as you. Again.”

She remade the cube, after a fashion. Then
another and another until her supply of earth magick was exhausted and her
practice space was filled with a stumpy forest of stone cubes, some more geometrically
accurate than others.

“I feel as if I can’t make anything larger,”
Tyrissa said as Settan stepped through the cubes, testing each one. Some
withstood his mild kicks, though many crumbled. Every attempt at a larger cube
had ended in failure. The riftwinds, while strong for most applications of
earthen magick, couldn’t fuel her in Shaping.

“Hmm. It is possible that is your equivalent of a
Shaper’s response to air magicks.”

“How do you mean?”

“When in the presence of the opposing element a
Shaper’s gifts come easier. It is a reaction to the touch and presence of our
primal foes. A Shaper is stronger in the Rift than on the surface. Stronger
still when within an air domain. Since your form of magick is already
reactionary…”

“It responds proportionally to what I encounter.”
Tyrissa said excitedly. She stood and circled around the training area,
thinking it over. It explained why most elchemical devices caused no reaction,
despite being made with elementally aligned materials: they were inert. The
Rift and nearby active magicks were a step above that. Then Pactbound and then
domains. And beyond domains… she spun on her heels toward Settan.

“What about in the planes themselves?”

“Then we would be as gods,” Settan replied
without hesitation, as if he knew exactly what it was like.

Tyrissa nodded thoughtfully.
What strange
realms have you visited, Settan?

“Well, hopefully what I’ve learned about Shaping will
be enough. I’ll have to improvise next time.” If they caught Vralin within the
Crater itself, perhaps she would be stronger at Shaping just by virtue of
environment.

“Next time?”

“This will be our last session for a while. We’re
going after Vralin as soon as we can get a zeppelin south. Got any tips?”

“Mmm. Windmages are rare these days. I have never
fought one. In that regard you have more experience than I. As for Shaping, you
have the basics down. It is only a matter of practice, of turning a weak
construction into a strong one. It is for the best that our sessions are at an
end. The Khalanheim Circle will meet soon. That will require my full
attention.”

Tyrissa saw deep concern on his face. Eidar’s
reaction to her was extreme, but he was able to check his anger. Eventually. He
would tell them about her and the other Shapers might not be some
accommodating. She was glad to be leaving the city soon.

“You’re going through with Eidar’s idea? You’re
rejoining?”

Settan considered her question for so long that
Tyrissa thought he might not have heard it.

“The earth moves methodically until there is a
burst of fury,” the Shaper said. “Rockslides. Earthquakes. Volcanoes. The
various Circles are steadily approaching such a burst. I fear that, should
certain choices be made, the common people will no longer see us as so benign,
so helpful. Eidar convinced me to return, to attempt to guide the Circle away from
those decisions. If they have a choice at all.”

Tyrissa felt a nebulous worry rise in her gut,
well apart from the weight of stone pulled from the riftwinds. She felt that
regardless of how soon they caught Vralin, the troubles caused by one Pactbound
would be supplanted by another.

“Could you be more specific, Settan?”

He shook his head. “I really cannot, for I do not
know the details.” The Shaper turned towards the tunnel that lead back up to
the surface and said, “When you return to Khalanheim, try to stay in touch. It
would be good to have a wild card like you around. Come. Let’s run back up one
more time.”

As usual, Settan broke into a run, leaving Tyrissa
racing to catch up. After so much training, she easily kept pace with Settan
and was able to savor that last run to the upper levels: the heavy air rushing
through her hair, the slap of foot to stone, and the stability of earthen
magick coursing through her muscles. They emerged in an alleyway of Under Crossing,
not far from the crossroads that mirrored the great square above. The din of
the passing traffic echoed off the cavernous ceilings, buzzing through the air and
stone like the thrum of life itself.

“Good hunting, Tyrissa. One less Windmage is one
less problem. Stay solid.”

“Stay steady, Settan.”

With that Settan vanished back into the gloom of
the earth’s depths, the sound of his feet like a departing rockslide.

Tyrissa leaned over the top of a low fence made
of rough-cut logs that ringed an artificial pond. To her left, Liran copied her
pose while tossing a pinecone between his hands. She had just finished catching
Liran up on recent events, revelations, and where she was bound next. It was a
lot to go through as he had been equally busy with less dramatic work within his
Prime. Her brother silently digested it all, staring out across the pond and
the wooded grounds that fronted the headquarters of the Khalan North Trade
Company.

Angled afternoon sunlight filtered through
heights of the Morgwood evergreens above them. A wide variety of tree and plant
species filled the Prime’s grounds, a collection of living trophies from Khalan
North’s long-range trade expeditions. Most of the grounds were in a brown and
barren winter state, the leaves of autumn skittering about on the riftwinds.
Pine needles and waterlogged leaves bobbed on the surface of the pond between
the drooping remnants of cattails.

“All right,” Liran said finally and with
finality.

“Just… ’all right’?”

“Yeah. What weight does my word carry against the
grand struggle among the Outer Powers and the mysterious legacy of a line of counter-elemental
enforcer witches?”

“Not much.” Tyrissa said, though it was half a
lie. His word didn’t matter in the greater context, but she deeply cared about
what he thought all the same.

“We all must play with whatever hand we’re dealt.
You’re headed for the Hithian Crater on some grand quest. I’m going on a joint
mission between Rift Company and North to the opposite end of the Rift. Is it
so different?”

“It’s a
little
different,” Tyrissa said
with a smile. Liran had delivered his news first: he was bound for another
far-flung trade mission to a town called Asul Cercerni at the northern terminus
of the Rift in the shadow of the Ten Brothers Mountains. Strange how that
worked out, the two of them headed for opposite extremes of the Rift: north and
south, to lands warped by air and earth domains.

“I bet you’ll even beat me back,” he said. “I’ll
put five gilders on it.”

“I’ll take that bet, sure.”

Liran let the pinecone roll out of his hand and fall
into the pond.

“I like how you hired a contractor to do some of
the research legwork for you. That’s very… Khalan of you.”

“All the more reason to get out of this city,
it’s starting to get under my skin.”

Liran straightened and turned toward her.

“’Valkwitch’, though? Can’t say I care for the
title.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, I think I’ll stick with ‘sister’.” It was
Liran’s parting gift to her, a refuge. To him, she was still just his little
sister and nothing else mattered, Pacts be damned. She pushed off the fence and
threw her arms around him.

“Thank you,” Tyrissa whispered.

The next morning, not long after sunrise, Tyrissa
and her allies waited on pier seven of the Moor district. The sounds of a
dockyard buzzed around them, the hiss of ocean waves replaced by the whispers
and howls of the riftwinds. The edge of the Rift was lined by a forest of
cranes and mooring towers standing above piers that reached out into the open
air of the canyon like metallic fingers. Dozens of zeppelins filled the mooring
towers, a mix of utilitarian cargo vessels and intricately styled passenger
ships. Most were bound for destinations north of Khalanheim, where the majority
of Rift-side cities lay. Kexal had arranged transit south on a Rift Company
cargo zeppelin named ‘
Chasm Skimmer’
, though specifying a Prime in
regards to zeppelins was often unnecessary. The Rift Company built, owned, and
operated nearly all the zeppelins flying the along the Rift.

Tyrissa warily watched the
Chasm Skimmer
swaying
above them at mooring tower number seven, its bulk casting a great pool of
shadow in the morning’s light. The body of the zeppelin looked like a massive
armored squash, the hull painted a sun-faded yellow. An armory of blades, fins,
and fans bristled on the underside of the ship, all for combating the variable
currents of the Rift. The impossible weight was held aloft through the union of
the riftwinds’ uplifting magicks below and the metal-rimmed balloon filled with
elchemy-made gases above. Zeppelins were a daily sight for her since arriving
in Khalanheim, the merchant fleet that fueled the city’s fortunes. But riding
on one was an entirely different matter and Tyrissa had doubts in placing her faith
in the flight ability of something that looked to have no business defying
gravity.

A wide doorway gaped open on one side of the hull
and a loading plank reached into the bowels of the
Chasm Skimmer
from
the top of the mooring tower. Crewmen and dockworkers pushed wheeled carts loaded
with crates of cargo into the zeppelin, unconcerned with the boarding plank’s lack
of sides and the thirty-foot fall. They shouted at each other in a patois of
Hithian and the common tongue, and many of them bore the sharper facial
features of the fallen southern nation.

“Doesn’t this break your rule of never being on
the ocean, Kexal?” The ship was far from the stately galleons or sleek warships
that came to mind when Tyrissa thought about sailing, though her impression was
informed solely by stories and pictures.

“Almost. I make an exception for zepps because
you can see what may or may not be lurkin’ underneath you,” Kexal said.

“Nothing?”

“I’ll take that over the
mystery
of
water.”

The stream of cargo filling the hold of the
Chasm
Skimmer
ended and the ship’s quartermaster waved them over to the entrance
of the mooring tower. Quartermaster Kressen looked every bit the part of a
grizzled sailor, though that was counterbalanced by his obvious Hithian blood.
He gave Hali a deep bow and said, “
Lisin’dir. I
f you and your friends
will follow me?”

Kressen led them into the mooring tower, a hollow
three-story cylinder with walls lined in chains and machinery. “The Captain’s
not pleased with having to take the Inthai route, but for the honor of carrying
you? We’ll take the extra days without complaint.”

“Thank you, Kressen.” Hali said.

“Kexal, how much of this arrangement is your
doing and how much is Hali’s?” Tyrissa asked in a low voice.

“I may have dropped a few names in the process,”
Kexal replied with a sly grin

The quartermaster went to a control panel on one
side of the circular lift and pulled a lever. With the creak of ropes and
rattle of taut chains, the platform rumbled its way up the tower.

Kressen spoke louder over the noise. “We’ll moor
at Dovenell in three days and arrive at New Inthai in eight, if the winds be
good. The remaining nights will likely be at outpost towers.” Zeppelins didn’t
fly by night, when the darkness hid the slight changes in the riftwinds that
could result in a disastrous collision with the canyon walls. The outpost
towers were little more than a place to tie down and wait for the dawn.

Eight days. It had already been three since their
failed capture attempt in the depths below the city and Vralin’s lead would be
widened considerably if he had found a faster ship. From the maps Tyrissa
studied the night before, the Hithian settlement of New Inthai was the end of
the line when it came to Rift transit. It lay at the southern end of the Rift,
just below the rim of the Hithian Crater. It was also Tsellien and Vralin’s
hometown. Tyrissa patted the Tsellien’s Valkwitch emblem in her pocket. There
was an important secondary task she would have to see to while in New Inthai.

The lift shuddered to a halt and Kressen led them
across the scuffed boarding platform into the
Chasm Skimmer.
As soon as
they stepped aboard, Tyrissa could feel the rhythmic drift and tug of the ship bobbing
in place. Within the hold, the ship’s crew stacked and secured a maze of crates
and sacks for the journey and below the din of the crew at work Tyrissa could
hear the mechanical grind and whirl of the machinery that lined kept the
zeppelin aloft. They ascended to the deck above where the brief tour ended at a
door in a shoulder-width hallway. Nearby, light streamed in from an open trap
door at the top of a short flight of narrow stairs that led to the top deck.

“We’re no pleasure cruise and the passenger space
is tight, but I think you’ll manage,” Kressen said. “The top deck’s always open
if sometimes cold at night. We should have clear weather this time of year.” The
passenger cabin was a barren wooden cube with a pair of hammocks tied to the
ceiling, a few secured cots, and a fold-out table opposite the door. A framed horizontal
map of the Rift stuck to the wall above the table was the only piece of décor.

“Master Guldres let me know the score, who you’re
chasing. I knew men on the expedition that Windmage tore up. Good men. Send him
on to hell for me, yeah?”

“That’s the plan, Quartermaster,” Kexal said.
“Thank you kindly for the hospitality.”

Kressen nodded and excused himself.

The faint recoil of the zeppelin tugging against
its mooring tower was suddenly gone and there was only the feeling of being
detached. The
Chasm Skimmer
had cast off. Tyrissa set down her light
pack of supplies and staff and followed the quartermaster to the top deck.

She emerged toward the rear of the ship and stood
aside to watch as the crew hurried about and saw to a hundred small tasks. The top
deck of the zeppelin had all the charm of a spacious cage. Flexible mesh enclosed
the deck, rising from the railing of the ship to connect with the metal rims
and rigging of the balloon above. A gust sliced across the deck, the mesh a
safeguard against the assured death from being swept overboard but doing
nothing to dampen the winds. The gust faded back to the typical riftwind breeze
that tossed any loose hair or clothing in the slow, aquatic way that Tyrissa had
grown accustomed to in her training sessions with Settan.

Tyrissa felt the familiar growth of earth magick
rise in her core, though this high in the Rift the intensity was much weaker.
In a coat pocket, she felt the weight of a smooth palm-sized rock, brought along
as an outlet for what she absorbed and to practice Shaping. It was small enough
to be discrete, as she suspected any flagrant displays of pact magick wouldn’t
be welcome on the ship.

A platform with a grated floor extended from the
rear of the ship like a tail. There, a pair of crewmen let a weighted rope fall
overboard through a foot-wide trap door. Pennants in a repeating pattern of
colors marked the rope at regular intervals. Shortly after the rope snapped
against its spool one of the crewmen called out, “Strong southerlies three-fifty
down Captain!”

“Three-fifty down,” came the captain’s response
from nest of levers and wheels atop the raised dais at the center of the deck.
“Begin the descent, Mr. Forlan.” The squeal of metal springing into motion sounded
above the winds as the array of fans and turbines came alive under the ship.

Tyrissa found a spot on the mesh wall well away
from any mechanisms or ropes or ladders. She curled her fingers through the
mesh and watched with a hint of wistfulness as the
Chasm Skimmer
dropped
deeper into the Rift’s stony embrace and the city of Khalanheim rose and
retreated from sight.

There was little to do each day but practice,
either improving her Shaping or sparring with Kexal, and the second activity became
a source of entertainment for the crew. The
Chasm Skimmer’s
cruising
depth ranged between two hundred and a thousand feet, leaving little to see
other than monotonous rock walls during daylight hours. No pleasure cruise
indeed. They rose above the edge of the Rift to moor for the night at lonely
towers hanging over the edge of the Rift in the middle of nowhere, the great
canyon’s equivalent of lighthouses and safe harbor. The towers were manned by lone
dockmasters that Kexal found quite incorruptible, unwilling to speak of which
zeppelins might or might not have pass through recently. Apparently they had no
desire to risk their hermit-like jobs.

Garth turned their quarters into a makeshift
workshop to put the finishing touches on their ‘trump card’. Wolef managed to
sleep through the mute Jalarni’s tinkering, taking the journey to shift his
sleep schedule to a more normal rhythm. Tyrissa saw little of either of them,
preferring to stay on deck. She favored sitting on the rear sounding platform.
Encased more closely in the ship’s mesh walls, she felt slightly more immersed
in the riftwinds that flowed around the zeppelin. She practiced Shaping and was
soon able to split the stone into many fragments and meld them back together
with ease, as well as mold it into more complex shapes. With as many hours as
she had, the process was growing boring. She needed more. More stone to work
with and stronger winds to fuel her. Sometimes she would simply sit there in a
meditative state and watch as the Rift drifted by, trying to isolate the faint air
magick signature of the zeppelin’s turbines and fans from the encompassing
riftwinds.

At Dovenell, the Heartroad met its end. The road,
easily seen as invincible and eternal, jutted out over the western Rift wall
like a jagged, broken smile. Tyrissa looked south for the road to reappear, but
it was as if the Rift had swallowed the southern leg of the great road whole.
Beyond that, Dovenell was underwhelming, similar to the small towns that lined
the Heartroad north of Khalanheim with the addition of a row of docking towers,
piers, and warehouses to serve the zeppelin trade. From the height of the
Chasm
Skimmer
, Tyrissa could see that the land here was largely dry grassland
painted a wintery brownish-yellow. The east side of the Rift was worse off than
the west: desiccated and barren, the great canyon forming a stark division
between nations and biomes.

The passenger cabin had a map of the lands around
the Rift set into long horizontal frame, north oriented to the left. Black
double crosses denoting mooring towers dotted either side of the canyon, though
many on the east side had red slashes marking them as abandoned and condemned.
That entire side was labeled as part of the Rhonian Empire but, aside from a
pair of towns marked ‘ruined’, Tyrissa saw no hint of imperial ownership when
the
Chasm Skimmer
surfaced before sunset each day. The Empire remained a
remote presence despite being technically within sight.

The Rift widened with each passing mile and by
day six the cliff walls had drawn apart to twice the distance at Khalanheim. Shallow
canyons began to fork off the Rift, dry tributaries that fed a vast empty
river. The dawn and dusk views of the lands above became grim vistas of
emptiness to the west and desolation to the east, broken only by the
intermittent zeppelin mooring towers. Tyrissa knew they had passed the southern
border of Khalan territory but there was no obvious indication of that change,
only the feeling that the cataclysm of the Fall was but a recent memory here.
Tyrissa supposed that was true for the earth and exactly one woman.

Through the trip south Hali was even more distant
than usual, but Tyrissa couldn’t fault her. The zeppelin’s crew were as
differential to Hali as to their own captain. She was a symbol to them and for
Hali this might be a sacred pilgrimage, a return home, with all the associated memories
and sorrows. If anything, she hid it well behind that mask of youth. Tyrissa tried
to put Morgale in place of Hithia but couldn’t summon the understanding,
couldn’t fathom the devastation and loss of everything you’ve ever known.

Tyrissa kept her own excitement well hidden.
Hithia was a legend to her, the setting of countless heroic stories in the
books of her youth. Even in ruin it held a powerful mystique, though she tried
to check such childishness with the reality of their task and the weight of her
Pact. Her Pact as a Valkwitch. She had no idea what that really meant, and
explaining it to her allies proved difficult. She knew precious little, all of
it disjointed. If only she had more time with Giroon before they had to leave,
but that was not to be. It would have to wait until they returned. Thinking on
it too much caused the excitement of the journey to give way to melancholy. Was
this to be her life? To wander from place to place, blown about on the shifting
winds of whatever her Pact subtly decreed? When she thought of it that way,
Tyrissa wasn’t sure why she ever desired some grand life of adventure. The
romanticized visions of her childhood never felt like the heroes had no choice
in the matter.

I could have turned around at any time, given
up, let the consequences come.