Valkwitch (The Valkwitch Saga Book 1) by Michael Watson Page A

was
the wash of silver light and their final words: Prove Yourself Worthy.
    Tyrissa awoke to the warmth of the afternoon sun
shining upon her face through one of the rifts in the ceiling of the temple.
Her eyes fluttered open, settling into a squint against the light. Her heart
held a calm beat, and her first breath drew in the sweetest air she’d ever
tasted, even if it was thick with the scent of blood.
    Blood. It was everywhere and she lay at the
center of a congealed pool. Tyrissa could feel it soaked through the back of
her tattered clothes, stains coating her arms and face, dried flecks falling
away when she moved. Her stomach heaved in revulsion as she realized this was
all her blood. Then the memories of what transpired flooded back into her mind,
every agonizing detail. Tyrissa sat up with a startled cry accompanied by the
vile sound of peeling away from the sticky floor. Her hands went to her abdomen
where the daemon’s fatal, savage blow landed and found only clean skin ringed
by her torn shirt. All of the lesser, countless cuts from the fight were also
gone. She checked her left side for the long, jagged scar from a nasty fall years
ago, brushing away caked-on blood. Nothing. Her arm was clear of the weeks old
scars from the wurm as well.
    She was alive, reborn, rebuilt. Her mind twisted
in rejection, racing for a denial. It was a dream. This was the afterlife. This
is a daemon’s final trick.
    No. I’m alive. Even if I smell of
nothing but death.
    The thought was horrifying and exhilarating in
equal measure.
    Tyrissa pulled her legs, stiff and caked with
blood, free of the pool. She crawled a few paces away, pushing aside the ring
of stones. Where she once lay there was now an outline in the blood pool. Out
of the sunlight and the disorientation fading, she noticed that not all was
well. Her left foot still burned with a persistent, acidic heat where the
daemon grabbed her. She yanked off the half melted and useless remnants of her
boot, the sole hanging on by frayed strips of once-fine Morg leatherwork. Pain
flashed through her like lightning and her scream echoing through the empty
cathedral was its thunder. Charred skin and bead sized boils coated her foot
and ankle. Her toes were unaffected and she could wiggle them, receiving five
lashes of pain for the effort. It had to be a lingering corruption, a flaw in
otherwise divine mercy.
    Tyrissa took in her surroundings while waiting for
the pain in her foot to subside back to the dull burning. The chamber was
unchanged and yet somehow less sinister. Wind whistled across the cracked
ceiling as rich afternoon sunlight angled down onto the black floor tiles.
Judging by the light she had been out for a few hours. Her staff, still
thankfully in once piece, lay against one wall. Her pack was near the entryway,
its contents spilled out on the floor. She could recall images of every second
of the one-sided fight, yet couldn’t remember removing the bag or the daemon
cutting it away.
    She steeled herself and looked over at Tsellien’s
body. A cloud of flies swarmed about the corpse, the natural processes of decay
rushing in to reassert their sway. Tyrissa crawled over to her unexpected
savior, eyes tearing from the waves of pain that coursed out of her foot.
    Tsellien’s wore a death mask of resignation, of
utter calm. With a bowed head, Tyrissa gave her a short, silent wake, the best
she could do here. The buzzing cloud of flies sang the funeral dirge.
    “I’m sorry,” Tyrissa said to the dead woman, as
she pulled off Tsellien’s left boot and looked for anything else worth
scavenging. She would need to cover her foot and eventually walk on it to get
home. No one knew where she was. She would be rescued by no hands but her own
and found it easier to think of it not as scavenging but as a final set of
gifts, a critical, if vague difference.
    Tyrissa crawled over to a nearby discarded cloak.
The material was a fabric she didn’t recognize: light, soft and