“This is terrifying.” The words slipped out. I couldn’t speak.
“It is, and I spent two years looking at the world like that.”
“Sweet Mother of S’Kir.”
He let out another chuckle. “You’ve already got the technique. You dropped your walls to let the magic in. You have to put them back up to keep it out.”
“Wait, you told me to drop the walls I already had up?”
Vitas cocked his head. “It is far easier to take walls down than put them up. Rebuild what you had, make them higher and better, and you’ll understand how to control what you see and don’t. But—don’t lock all of it out. You want to have enough magic to be able to sense it and hear what it’s telling you. Warning you. Advising you.”
Bit by bit, I started building the walls against the tide of magic. I chose my bricks and made them glass so I could easily see out of them, but they stemmed the flow.
“I thought magic was just a force to be used.”
“No, no. Not at all. It’s part and parcel of our existence, and if you move beyond the power of it, you can find the subtlety of it, sensing the shifts in someone else’s.”
Grinning, Vitas watched me. “How do you think I beat Bebbenel when I was tested?”
“You listened to what the magic told you…”
He gave a sage nod. “Everyone in S’Kir uses ‘magic’ and ‘power’ interchangeably, and while they can be, the concepts are really very different. Magic is a symbiotic force while power is a brute force. And we wield magic, not power.”
The bricks of glass I built my shield with grew taller, and Vitas’s face, clothes, and the wall he sat on started to become less clouded with the magic.
Vitas leaned in close. “There are some who think we wield power, that our laws and words are absolute. They are not. Remember this, Kimber: The temple masters are true and loyal to the magic of S’Kir. Always.”
The horses cantered into the parkland surrounding the stadia.
The other masters with me were bantering lightly but under it all—listening to the magic as Vitas had said—the undercurrent of silence and secrecy rode in the words.
Mistress Ophelia pulled her horse up just outside the Breaking Cave.
I was a little surprised they’d come here.
The seven of us pulled to a halt, and Lunella nodded. After a moment, she urged her horse forward into the cave.
It had been weeks since I’d been here last, and again, the place had changed.
The scree that made my first visit there so dangerous had been cleared to form a clean path. There was evidence everywhere of teams of people to study the cave. There was…pollution.
Human pollution, a lingering feeling in the air of humanity and… well, the best thing I could come up with was uncaring. Some were coming through with not an iota of interest in the purpose and reason of the cave. They merely wanted what it could do for them.
Further into the cave was a hitching post station, a series of gaslights, and a trough.
We weren’t the first to ride in this far.
The women with me were quiet now, dismounting and tying the horses to the posts at the trough. The leather boots we wore made no noise on the soft dirt that led to the Breaking Cavern.
I followed the women into the cavern and walked back toward the place where the magic had burst forth and picked me.
I still didn’t know what it picked me for.
All the masters called me the Breaker of the Spine, but no one bothered to explain.
Non-explanation seemed to be their modus operandi.
I could feel the pull of the cavern ahead. At first, it was easy for me to accept that I was linked to this cave. Now, though, as I learned more, I was starting to become frightened of it.
There was power there, the likes of which now truly overwhelmed me. No one should be able to access this much of the magic.
More, I didn’t want it to be me, and I didn’t want to be there again.
I followed a few steps behind, apprehensive about entering the cavern. I forced myself to take the few steps in as I instantly forgot all my fear of the place. Like an old friend with an old blanket and a cup of hot cocoa on a chilled night, the magic welcomed me again. The fright washed away, and I felt like I was home.
I watched the lights in the crystals pulse and dance, shading and tinting as they followed my mood.
I laughed, and the magic tripped through the crystals.
There were a lot more of them now—less of the hard, uncolored rock between them. Their cloudy facades were resplendent when the magic touched them. The cavern was larger—no, deeper than before. The roof felt as if it was at its natural height, but the walls wanted to reach further back.
Not yet, I thought. Give it time.
“Holy Mother,” Mistress Carolee whispered, spinning slowly in the cave.
Lunella folded her arms. “I told you.”
“I didn’t realize the effect was this strong.” Mistress Sona barely breathed the words.
“I’ve been telling you all along. Tymon and I have been here with Kimber, and this is why we know she is the Breaker.”
“You should have dragged us here.” Mistress Ophelia was unmoving as her eyes roamed the walls.
“No, I shouldn’t have. You needed to come and see for yourselves. This is what the Breaking Cave does when Kimber is present. It is nothing when she is not here.”
Raising my hand, I waited for someone to notice me. It took a long minute until Mistress Maurielle laughed and motioned me to put my hand down.
“What is it, Kimber?”
“What does Breaker of the Spine even mean?”
“It’s literal,” Mistress Maurielle said. “The magic has chosen you to change our world, to bring down the Spine that divides S’Kir—the druids from the vampires.”
“Bring down the Spine? How in the name of seven hells am I supposed to do that?” I jabbed my finger up toward the ceiling. “There are leagues of rock above us. Reaching so high even the best mountaineer cannot cross it. I’m supposed to destroy this with what? How? The spine is three hundred thirty leagues long!”
“Magic,” Mistress Sona answered.
Tossing my hands in the air, the crystals around me responded with a sad, minor tone chime and a flash of red of anger and green of frustration. “What does that mean? The magic this, the magic that! I don’t know what’s going on around me! I was a teacher until a few weeks ago! I’m not a wielder. I’m not a strategist. I need help. I need someone to explain all this to me!”
The mountain gave a frightening rumble around us, and a few of the dark rocks on the wall chipped and fell to the ground.
The other masters ducked and started to run for the entrance, but I was angry and irrational.
“Stop it!” I screamed. “You picked me! I didn’t want this! Stop trying to scare me! I’m trying to understand!”
The tremor halted.
My legs gave out. I landed flat on my backside.
The sobs burst out of me, and I couldn’t stop them.
Mistress Ophelia was the first to move again, rushing over to me. In a shocking move, she swooped down and gathered me into her arms.
She was the last I expected this from.
“Child, child. Take a deep breath; calm yourself.”
“I’m not a child.” I smeared the tears off my cheek.
Her fingers brushed my chin and lifted my gaze to hers. “To a twenty-one-hundred-year-old temple master, you most certainly are.”
“The mountain listened to me.” I was still trembling.
“Yes, I know. That’s because you’re the Breaker of the Spine. This is why this cavern listens to you.”
“But what does that mean?”
“It means you will bring this mountain down. You will tumble it from its heights to the ground again. There may be tall hills and a few rocky peaks, but the division between us and the vampires will end when you bring the Spine to the ground.”
Lunella broke from the group by the exit. “Your magic has always been your magic, my dear. What you said in the garden has made us all realize women who are not of the temple have never been taught with a Triium. Ever. They are all students of the male.”
Mistresses Sona and Maurielle also walked back in, Mistress Sona moving closer to me.
“You have made us realize we have a great, untapped force out there,” she said. “Vast, in fact.”
“…force?” I could hear my own surprise.
“Yes. Force.” Mistress Neves ran her hand over the cloudy, dim crystals. “We have known that things were going to change for a while now. Dreams, precognitions, visions, foretelling… all the different ways we can see and be told of the future. They have all been pointing us toward a great upheaval in S’Kir.”
Mistress Sona took over the narrative. “We have been trying to find those loyal to the temple, more to the point, loyal to the magic of S’Kir. People who can wield magic well. Not even the most powerful, but the most skilled. We are peaceful, but it is always wise to know your strengths.”
“And weaknesses,” Mistress Neves added.
Mistress Maurielle harrumphed and sat near me on the ground. “Needless to say, they’ve nearly all been male. Skilled, loyal magic wielders, but males. We’ve been wondering where the women were.”
“And you”—Mistress Carolee folded her arms and leaned against the rocks—“may have just figured out why they’ve been almost exclusively men.”
Nodding, I whispered. “The Triium.”
“None of us knew about it as more than a legend when we were raised to the robes,” Lunella continued. “Once we were handed those, then we learned about it. It never occurred to me it might be the reason we haven’t found many females. Until now.”
Mistress Ophelia had let me go, let me sit up, but kept a hand on my arm. “And it’s critical, most critical, that we have both men and women to stand with the temple.”
I understood right away. “Balance. Always balance.”
Mistress Neves tapped her fingers on the crystals this time, and they rang, faintly, from the impacts. “Always balance. Between male and female. Vampire and druid. Good and evil.”
Sitting up a little straighter, things started to swirl together in my brain. “Seven and seven.”
Grinning, Mistress Sona tapped her nose.
“So a stronger force would be made of male and female.” I leaned back on my hands and considered the women in the cavern with me. “How on S’Kir would we go about recruiting women to fight? Most are… peaceful.”
“You have not yet had a child,” Mistress Carolee said. “Have you ever seen a mother when her child is threatened? When her home is threatened? It is a sight to behold.”
Leaning forward, resting her head on her chin, Lunella grinned at me. “If we are fighting for the continuation of our own way of life, women will fight.”
Mistress Neves held up a finger. “We have to pick and choose carefully who we train in the Triium magic if they aren’t in the temple. But…”
Mistress Ophelia said, “It’s our job to make sure they can wield both their magic and their sword with equal skill.”
Chapter Five
~ Kimber ~
The feeling of having to teach half the population of S’Kir was overwhelming.
My magic, I doubted.
My sword work, I didn’t. Not even a bit.
While my parents had indulged me when I was younger, excusing me from all kinds of magical and physical activities, they wanted me to know how to defend myself.
Since my father was a prize-winning fencer, he picked the sword for me.
I loved my sword.
Lunella chased me backward, the metal of her sword scraping along the blade of mine. The sound was horrible, but that was the idea.
At the last minute, as I saw her cringing from the noise, I twisted my blade, and she instantly became the attacked instead of the attacker.
I swept the sword up and around, dragging her blade with mine and slamming it into the wooden practice floor, disabling her.
Her spell slammed into the middle of my stomach, winding me, and throwing me backward through the room.
“When are you going to remember to use your magic to block?!”
I groaned at the ceiling, and sat up, staring at Mistress Neves watching our practice. She had a look of frustration that curled her lips downward.
“She will never learn,” Master Dorian said.
Lunella yanked her sword out of the floor and whirled on Master Dorian, pointing the weapon at him. “For your information, it was only when I was disengaged from her that I had any hope of actually getting in a spell to knock her back.”
Mistress Sona pursed her lips and nodded to the slice I had given her on the shoulder. “She’s right. Mistress Kimber is formidable with the sword.”
“It doesn’t mean a thing if the girl can’t wield her magic with it,” Master Dorian snapped as he walked out of the room.
Standing from a corner he, unknown to us, occupied, Vitas strode into the center of the room. “Ignore the damn old buzzard. He’s the oldest and the crankiest of all of us.”
I tried not to crack a smile, but I couldn’t help it.
“Mistress Neves, you know my magic is—”
“This is why we are here,” she snapped. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask Master Argo to challenge you on the sword. Until we have someone who can keep up with you, there’s no hope of you learning how to use your magic with the sword.”
My shoulders drooped. I was not on Master Argo’s good side.
Elex appeared standing over me and offered me a hand. “Kimber, you do realize that it’s a compliment that they have to bring Master Argo here.”
I grabbed the offered hand, and Elex hauled me off my ass.
“Master Argo and I don’t see eye to eye, Elex.”
He kissed my forehead and smiled. “I realize that. He doesn’t approve of us here at all, and I know that. But if he’s the only one who can teach you how to use the magic and the sword at the same time, then—”
“Ugh! Stop making sense,” I grumbled.
There was a bang on the door, and it slammed open.
One of the university fellows stood there, looking worse for wear. Elex took a step toward him before he even opened his mouth.
“Professor Everettson, sir. I was sent to fetch you. There has been a breakthrough at the laboratory.” The messenger was panting. “Please. Come quickly.”
Mistress Ophelia nodded, dismissing him.
Elex touched my cheek and ran for the messenger as they both disappeared down the hall. I looked after him a long moment, watching and enjoying the view of his retreating backside.
Lunella leaned into my view. “You really need to learn to control your libido, my dear. It’s important that we exercise restraint in such things.”
“But, his butt…” I stammered, sounding like an ass.
“Yes, I know. It is nice. I can see why you picked him. But we must appear in control of ourselves at all time.”
With a deep sigh, I turned back to the room—
—as the ground heaved below us.
A startled, permeating silence followed the heave.
When the ground rocked again, this time side to side in a great shaking buckle, it seemed everyone in S’Kir started screaming at the same time. The screams ran through the walls of the dorm and panic rained down on the group of us in the practice room.
The shaking didn’t stop. Glass cracked and tinkled as it broke, the beams of the building screamed, some buckling.
Grabbing one arm each, Mistresses Neves and Ophelia dragged me out from the middle of the room toward the doorways that were at the end.
The screaming grew louder in the doorway. It was all from the floors above.
And still, the shaking did not stop.
“The mountain is trying to fall,” Neves whispered over the din.
I s
napped my head around. “It’s not time.”
“I agree. We are not ready. It’s not time for the Spine to break.”
Fear lanced through me. “What do we do?”
Mistress Ophelia cocked her head. “Stop it.”
I gasped. “Stop it?”
Her voice was clear over the sound of the very earth below us shaking. “You’re the Breaker of the Spine. You command the magic in the mountain.”
“How do you know—”
Mistress Neves cut me off. “Feel it, child! You have got to learn your magic. Those walls you built with Vitas are meant to be merely a stopper, not an unbreachable fortress!”
“Stop the tremor, Kimber,” Mistress Ophelia snapped. “You saw the Triium. Now figure out your own magic!”
I dropped to the floor, slapping my hand on the cold tile of the entrance, and dropped all the magical walls I had put up.
The world burst into strings and clouds colored by the magic that was everything.
I could see angry red strings, pulling and twisting the ground. My magic was being drawn to the mountains at the edge of the city, and it was chaos.
It was also the Spine.
The mountain was angry, tense.
Pulsing.
This wasn’t the way the Spine should break.
My own magic, a soft cloud, assured me it should be broken in peace and tranquility.
What it presented now was not that—and if it were to fall, the druid world would not survive.
We would be angry. Hateful. Vengeful.
Lashing my magic to a string that was particularly violent, I let it rip my consciousness back to the mountain in a flash.
The anger here was overwhelming—I could feel my own anger rise. That was bad; I needed to be in control.
Stop!
It felt like I was yelling at the sky, and the words were sucked into nothing between the stars.
I gathered my magic around my consciousness like a thick, roiling fog in the heart of the spine, in the heart of the rock and the magic in the mountain.
Pulling it close to me, tight into me, I took a deep breath—or what I imagined was a deep breath—and screamed out the command again.
STOP!
The fog of magic burst like a firework outward. As fast as it could, it shoved the command into every rock and crevasse that stood in the Spine.
King of Gods (Vampire Crown Book 2) Page 5