Valkwitch (The Valkwitch Saga Book 1) by Michael Watson

and
detached as the First. “The East is fractured and tainted by her own hand. The
West is but a child, unready and vulnerable. We’re nearly broken when we must
be stronger than ever. The North cannot sleep. Not now.”
    The waves returned, speaking in the steady rhythm
of the tides. “The South. She has stood alone in the past. She can again.”
    “They haven’t the time ,” Tsellien pleaded
with the unseen void of eternity. “The Elements sense their advantage. They
roil in fury against thinning barriers, slipping though uncountable weak
points, man-made or not. Soon, a great storm will boil through the world.”
    A distant avalanche’s roar: “And you would cast
this one adrift into that storm? Returning this one would leave her alone and
lost in a life of strife. She’d be flawed and weak and ignorant. Her earthly
time, and yours, is at an end. We wait for Rebirth.”
    “And while we wait the world will unknowingly
depend on a single set of shoulders,” Tsellien said, her voice losing its
passion, its humanity. “I’d rather balance the world along an axis than a mere
point. Yes, this one will be flawed but we all are. That’s the weakness and strength of our line.”
    As Tsellien made her case, Tyrissa felt… nothing.
They spoke of her yet she regarded the conversation as about someone else.She
was but an observer, and a distracted one at that. The flecks of shadow began
to reappear in the silver fog, vile imperfections that floated in the calming
clouds and ate away at the warmth of this place. She wanted to cry out a
warning, but lacked the means. She knew they were here for her, here to claim
their prize.
    ‘ We’ll still have you ,’ said the memory of
a corrupt chorus.
    The wind sighed across a mountain valley,
stirring the boughs of an expanse of needled treetops, “Proceed, daughter.”
With that it retreated into the void, blowing away like sand scratching over
the cracked stonework of a dead empire, leaving only a sudden emptiness.
    Tyrissa felt the mists draw away, but the motes of
shadow remained, multiplying, threatening in their profane presence. Tsellien
knelt at her side, the woman’s face an indistinct artist’s sketch, her body
wrapped in gently billowing sashes of regal purple and silver. Pristine white
feathered wings spread from her back, an encompassing shroud that blocked none
of the omnipresent light. Tyrissa felt a weight press onto her chest, through
her heart. Tsellien’s eyes flared into two pools of molten silver, narrowed in
concentration. Filigree flows of divine energy ran between them. Connecting.
Binding.
    “Few get second chances, child of Morgale. If you
live you will live for our cause alone.” Her voice now held an angelic timbre
as timeless as the First’s. A surging, unreal heat spread through Tyrissa’s
body. She felt solid again, rebuilt. Still, those inky motes of shadow pressed
in, some extending clawing fingers that wormed through her being, as cold as
death.
    “A life of service or the oblivion of death. Do
you accept?” Tsellien’s voice became as the mists around them, filth-specked
and distorted. The corruption’s strength grew close to overpowering the purity
of this place, the mists now more black than silver.
    “Yes,” Tyrissa said, the word a spectral whisper
carrying the weight of the universe.
    “Prove yourself worthy of this legacy, daughter.”
    Tsellien placed a hand on Tyrissa forehead and
pushed her down and away in a burst of blinding silver light. As she fell
through the mists, a celestial bundle of energy burned like a young star in her
heart. On came the darkness from below, that missing embrace of oblivion. It
dared not touch her now, its chill held at bay by the heat of raw, radiant
power that blazed within her.

Chapter Eight
     
    Warmth. For a stunning slice of eternity all
Tyrissa felt was warmth. The spectral conversation between Tsellien and the
First dissolved away like the details of a dream, until all that remained