Valkwitch (The Valkwitch Saga Book 1) Read online

  Valkwitch

  by Michael L. Watson

  for Grandma Kay

  Table of Contents

  Prologue: Story Tellers and World Enders

  Part One: Beneath the Aurora

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Part Two: Two Sides of the Coin

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Part Three: Wind Chasers and Stone Shapers

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Part Four: The Ceaseless Gales

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Chapter Forty-four

  Epilogue: Valkwitch

  About the Author

  Acknowledgements

  Valkwitch

  Prologue

  Story Tellers and World Enders

  As I write this entry, Tyrissa stands at the edge of our shadow-cloaked campsite. She gazes out across this twisted, unearthly landscape at the eldritch light blazing beyond the horizon to the southwest. This is her nightly ritual: a solitary, defiant vigil staring down whatever may lie at our goal. She leans on her spear, the weapon that has carried her through so many struggles with stoic, unquestioning support. The Va—

  The rest of the sentence emerged as vanishing scratches as the pen ran out of ink again. Giroon let out a short sigh, set aside the nearly full book, and reached into his pack for a stoic companion of his own: a corked ink bottle. A slight wind stirred through the evening air as Giroon refilled his pen and he shivered despite the warmth of the nearby roaring campfire. At least, it was roaring now. At any moment it could gutter down to fickle matchstick flames or flare six feet into the air. Giroon kept his distance just in case it was the latter. The firelight cast out twenty feet and came to an abrupt stop. There, a ring of deep shadow swallowed the light whole, concealing their party of seven from the various walking horrors that lurked in this hellscape’s night. ‘Night’ was a generous term here, where the broken boundaries between their world and the elemental planes caused all manner of chaos in the sky, toying with the natural order of light and darkness.

  Giroon had spent his entire life entertaining others with stories of heroes marching off to accomplish the impossible and saving the world in the process. Through his adult years he traveled far and wide, delving into any and every culture’s repository of lore and myths, looking for new stories to tell and clues to long-held mysteries. Giroon never thought he’d experience such a journey first hand, much less chronicle the conclusion as it occurred. He simply wasn’t that creative. But it felt as he expected: bleak but defiant, desperate but noble, insane but necessary.

  Her ritual complete, Tyrissa returned to the fireside and sat crossed-legged next to Giroon. Her proximity steadied the campfire, the flames dropping in intensity. She laid her spear across her lap. The shaft was built of a deep gray wood run through with silver threads, like lightning boiling through a stormy sky. The bladed tip was crafted of an utterly black metal and seemed to only devour the light, just like the sculpted shadows that surrounded their campsite.

  “Writing away as usual, I see,” Tyrissa said, “Is it going well?”

  “It is. Very much so,” Giroon said. That was an understatement. The composition was effortless. Perhaps the apocalyptic mood hovering over their party eased the flow of words. They marched toward what might be the end of the world, and Giroon found the prospect of no future liberating to his writing. “However,” he added, “I’m finding the title to be the most vexing part.”

  “Tyrissa’s Saga.” She gave him her usual broad and toothy smile that never failed to brighten her face.

  Giroon returned the smile, but shook his head at the suggestion. “Much too simple. It needs to be truly grand for this is an epic to tower above all others.” Giroon thought for a moment, tapping the pen against his knuckles. Titles usually presented themselves in the process. Not so this time. “There must be something in the embarrassment of granted titles and honored epithets you’ve earned. There’s too many to choose from. Tyrissa, Fist of the Stars? Tyrissa, Of Ten and None? The Lance of Dawn, Titanbreaker—”

  “World Ender,” Tyrissa whispered, her face now clouded over with doubt. Giroon’s eyes darted to the heavily wrapped bundle sitting a prudent distance from the party’s gear. The air rippled around it like a heat shimmer and the earth below already bore faint cracks that weren’t present an hour ago. It would need to be moved every few hours to prevent it from burying itself overnight.

  “That part is yet unwritten,” he said. He hoped that Tyrissa was wrong, but feared that she was right. “I prefer ‘Bringer of the World’s Rebirth’ instead.”

  “Not bad,” she said, “If a little long.”

  Tyrissa fell into thoughtful silence, blue eyes sparkling as she stared into the campfire, face framed by loose strands of golden hair. In one hand she idly rotated her charm necklace in a slow circuit, coiling the chain to her neck and guiding the process in reverse. The charm was a simple steel circle monogrammed with two initials that were not her own and attached to an equally simple silver chain.

  Giroon recapped his pen, returned it and the unfinished chronicle to his pack, and joined Tyrissa in watching the crackling flames. Through the sheen of shadow above them the sky still bore hints of what passed for twilight here, and none of their party yet slept. Each day they made camp early for fear of getting caught in dangerous or indefensible terrain at nightfall. The warping touch of the raging Elemental Powers made this land unpredictable. An impossibly dense forest could give way to a volcanic rock waste, which in turn disintegrated into tenuous bridges of marble with nothing but sky above and below. Giroon couldn’t help but, in a grim way, find his companions’ caution amusing. The actions of the people sharing this campfire have shaken the world and realms beyond. History would see each enshrined as a legend, yet here they feared the night. Dinner rations were passed around in a reverent silence. Though they were close friends and allies, there was little to chat about anymore. Everything had been said, their choices were made, and they all knew what they soon must do. Such times lent themselves towards considerable inward reflection and quiet nightly firesides.

  “Tell us a story, Giroon,” Tyrissa said after many minutes of silence.

  “Ty, you must know all the stories worth telling as well as I do by now.” That was how they first met, ten years ago, a determined girl forcing down his inn room door with a challenge for Giroon, the master bard and storyteller from the Evelands. Since then, they’d combed through ma
nkind’s tapestry of tales, parsing truth from fiction but finding value in both. He hardly recognized that girl now, re-forged by the will of old, slumbering gods into a woman of legend.

  “Well, how about what you’re writing about me?”

  “Ah, that would be… premature.” Giroon guarded his work in progress from their prying eyes with a zealotry that would give the berserkers of his homeland pause. This would be his masterpiece. If they succeeded. If there would be anyone left to read it. “Besides,” he said, turning to sweep his hand toward the horizon that burned with dreadful beauty, “This particular story is nearing its conclusion.”

  “You and I both know that the ending is only a fraction of a good story,” Tyrissa said, undeterred. Giroon expected no less from her. “Endings have an inevitability to them: the hero succeeds or fails, and that’s it. What people really care about is the journey, the beginnings and middles, the victories and defeats along the way.” Tyrissa looked around the campfire at her companions. “Friends made, enemies slain, the loves and losses. That’s what people really want to hear.”

  “On that, you’ll get no argument from me,” said the bard. The book in his pack was only the last few weeks of the chronicle. He left the rest with his apprentice in a safe place. ‘Safe’ was, of course, as relative as this land’s night. Should he not return from this land that lay on no maps, Giroon trusted that his apprentice would be able to complete the chronicle, if in vague terms. The concluding pages in his pack hardly mattered beyond the binary resolution, and that would be obvious to everyone in the world soon enough.

  “You rattled off all those silly titles. Why don’t you tell us about the beginning? Before the titles, the plane-shifting, the titan-breaking. When I was just… me.”

  A well-practiced jester’s grin split the bard’s face. “Do you need a refresher on your own youth?”

  “No,” Tyrissa said, her smile making another appearance. “I just want to hear your version so I can correct the glaring flaws and ridiculous embellishments. While I still can.”

  Giroon feigned shock, ignoring Tyrissa’s casual assumption of her imminent death. That particular argument only led in circles. “Miss, those pages only contain the raw, unvarnished truth.”

  “Of course they do. Come on; tell us about Tyrissa Jorensen, the carpenter’s daughter. I want to hear about her.”

  Part One

  Beneath the Aurora

  Chapter One

  The aurora flared at the red peak of its cycle, shrouding the northern half of the sky with rippling curtains of crimson light. It was midday and while the sun tried mightily to outshine the trespasser in its azure domain, it had to settle for sharing. Below this luminous duel stretched a noble, northern land of soaring mountains and vast evergreen forests, pockmarked by countless lakes and scarred by rushing rivers and rocky crevasses. Here, among an ancient forest that enveloped the boundary between civilization and wilderness, one daughter and two sons of this land walked along a trail towards their home village with a morning’s worth of successful fishing.

  Tyrissa was a tall girl, built lean from years of running and climbing through the Morgwood and topped with a mane of golden blonde hair that did not see a comb often enough. Her face was somewhere short of pretty, but her smile was broad and striking, her blue eyes always bright with a touch of mischief. As the eldest, a scant few weeks short of seventeen years, she led their party of three through the forest with a comfort that a dwindling number of their people possessed. With a fishing spear propped on her shoulder, Tyrissa scanned their surroundings for the spot she had marked yesterday.

  The path was little more than a game trail that followed the top of a short ridge. To either side the ground slopped away into the summertime tangle of undergrowth and fallen branches. Thin pines towered above them in all directions, their heights swaying in the gentle breeze and filtering any sunlight that reached the forest floor into narrow slits. The fresh scents of resin, pollen, and foliage in full bloom filled the air.

  Tyrissa brought the three of them to a stop near a tree with her initials carved in its bark. She pointed the spear off the trail to their left, pushing aside the fronds of a summer fern.

  “This way,” she said. Her two brothers returned only blank stares.

  “Home’s back that way Ty,” ten-year-old Sven said while pointing up the trail, his voice tinged with a whine. Sven shared Tyrissa’s features, those of their father, though his hair was a typical boyish mop and his mouth usually held a tight, petulant frown, as it did now. At least he pointed in the correct direction this time.

  “I know,” Tyrissa said, “But we still need to catch dinner.”

  “But we have all these fish! We’ve been out here all morning and I’m tired.” Sven carried a small pack filled with fishing gear and hitched his shoulders to punctuate his discomfort at all this walking.

  “This’ll be the first time we’ve seen Liran in two years. We’re going to have something better than salmon or elk.” It was their brother Liran, five years her elder, who introduced Tyrissa to the trails and secrets of the forest. In turn, she tried to pass those same lessons and wonders onto Sven and Oster, with limited success. “Besides,” she said, “you need to toughen up. Mother coddles you too much.”

  “She does not!”

  “Then you won’t mind us taking a few more steps,” Tyrissa leaned on her youngest brother’s recently found need to prove himself stronger, a useful tool against his stubbornness.

  “Fine,” Sven muttered.

  “That-a-boy,” Tyrissa said, ruffling his hair. Sven ducked away. He hated that.

  “Ty, what’re you up to,” Oster asked. As usual, the boy of fifteen preferred patience over interruption.

  “When was the last time you had wurm steak?”

  Tyrissa smiled as Oster’s eyes widened and took on a distant cast as the memory returned to him. He took after their mother, with a rounder face, brown eyes, and hair that was more honey than gold. Though built wider than average he wasn’t fat, just solid with the effects of his apprenticeship at the town smithy starting to show. Tyrissa had already given up trying to beat him in arm wrestling.

  “Midwinter’s Feast the year before last,” he said. “Mistress Forran said we could only have one each, but I snuck out a second under a big slice of bread when she wasn’t looking. It was the best feast ever.”

  “Right,” Tyrissa agreed. Oster had an impeccable memory for great food. “Can you think of a better dinner to welcome Liran home?”

  “No. Lead on.”

  “Great,” Tyrissa said, stepping off the trail, the ferns slapping at her legs.

  Ten minutes of traversing the wilder, off-trail terrain of fallen trees and shallow creeks led to a wide clearing covered in moss, dried needles, and fallen pine cones. Thirty feet across and roughly circular, the stillness of the area was distinct from the typical forest calm. The ground was too clear of small ferns or saplings or other undergrowth that would rush to fill such a space with its pool of unfiltered sunlight.

  Tyrissa dropped her pack to the ground and held a hand up to her brothers.

  “Stay there. Don’t come any further.” Tyrissa began poking the ground in front of her with the butt of the fishing spear, taking small steps forward between each jab. After a few paces the spear sunk into too-soft earth. She then dragged the spear through the ground, creating a shallow trench that filled with murky water.

  “What’s she doing,” Sven asked.

  “This is a raeg,” Oster said, “a pool of muck and mud that forms from years of spring rains and snowmelt collecting in a low area. If you’re alone and fall in, you’re done for as it’ll drag you down if you struggle against it.”

  “And that’s why you never go into clearings you don’t know?”

  “Correct.”

  “Which is what Ty’s doing right now?”

  Oster paused and said, “Also correct.”

  Her brothers weren’t wrong but sometimes, Tyrissa reminde
d herself, you have to take risks for the big prize. Tyrissa finished drawing a line in the earth and returned to the two boys. She smacked the fishing spear against a nearby pine tree, shaking off the mud coating the butt of the spear. The tree leaned precariously over the raeg, the growing pool threatening to topple the forest giant in the coming years.

  “I saw a wurm here a couple weeks ago,” Tyrissa said. “It should still be in there, they like to lurk in the muck during the summer. Here’s the plan. We’ll toss a couple fish in there to get its attention. Oster, unhook all of those and pile them up over there.” She pointed to the slope they came down, about fifteen feet away from the edge of the raeg. Oster simply nodded and went to work.

  “One fish will be hooked on a line as bait for the wurm to chase out. It’ll smell the pile once it’s on dry ground and rush over. Their vision in daylight is bad and it probably won’t even see us.” Tyrissa knelt and pulled a weighted net from the bottom of her pack.

  “Sven, all you have to do is throw this net on it after we lure it out, all right?” The boy took the net from her hands in agreement, though his brow was furrowed in worry.

  Tyrissa softened her voice and placed a hand on her youngest brother’s shoulder. “They aren’t as fast on dry ground when there’s no snow to burrow through. If anything goes wrong you can outrun it.”

  Sven nodded, looking only somewhat reassured. “How do you know all this Ty?”

  “I read a book. Ranger rule of the forest number four: know your prey.”

  That proved to be of little reassurance. Even Sven had taken to rolling his eyes whenever she quoted one of her ‘rules’.

  “But you haven’t done this before,” Sven said.

  “No. Anyway, Oster will man the fishing pole and lure. You stand between the raeg and the fish pile.”

  “And what are you going to do?”

  Tyrissa drew her belt knife, a well-built blade etched with Jorensen, their family name, and pointed at the fishing spear propped against the doomed, leaning tree.