Mistress Maurielle raised her eyebrows. “Huh.”
“Isn’t it possible that all these women we have dismissed as weak are victims of the male way of teaching?” I shuffled my foot against the ground. “I know we try to keep men and women equal, but you’ve just said yourselves, we don’t think the same.”
Mistress Carolee stroked a thoughtful finger over her bottom lip. “This makes sense. It would account for the large disparity in the magic wielders.”
I twisted my lip. “Wait. No one thought of this before?”
“The Triium is kept as a legend for a reason, my dear.” Lunella sat next to me.
“But how is that fair to us? We’ve been assumed the weaker magic wielders for all these years. Centuries.”
Mistress Sona raked a look over the side of the dormitory building. I felt a brush of her magic over us and knew no one could hear the words that followed. “There are eyes everywhere. Let’s adjourn somewhere the ears that go with them cannot hear us.”
The others nodded. I was lost.
Lunella took my hand. “Come. We will go on horseback. It’s time for some riding. It’s healthy for us to go for a ride in the countryside.”
Now they were being secretive.
Still, I was included in their intrigues.
Less than twenty minutes later, six of the temple masters had mounted on horses from the stables and trotted down a canopied path toward the Spine. The mountain peaks loomed so largely in my mind. The magic cascaded in waterfalls down the jagged, terrible rock faces.
Even since early in the week, the magic was more visible to me. To the point where I had to ask for help with not seeing it. I was afraid I was going to end up walking through a forest of magic, unable to see more than a few feet in front of me.
Mistress Sona had chuckled and handed me off to Master Vitas, who was the most magic-soaked of all of the masters, save Master Dorian.
“Tell me what you see out there.” Master Vitas had pointed to the valley that stretched out beyond the back of the temple grounds.
“Crawling strings of magic. Everywhere. There are some trees, which are also draped in strings, and just a few open patches of grass.”
“Hmm. I can see why they asked me. Do you know why they asked me?”
I shook my head.
“I want you to close your eyes and let the magic well up, dig in. Take over a bit. I can feel you’re holding it back to some degree.”
Nodding, I let out an even breath. My eyes shuttered, and I pulled in some of the magic. It rushed in, nearly overwhelming me. I staggered under the onslaught and couldn’t gain control of it again. It swirled and pushed and pulled and yanked—
“Whoa! Whoa!”
A bubble of calm settled over me, and a masculine chortle filled the once-again peaceful night.
“Yes, they were right to ask me. I want you to slowly open your eyes and look at me. Tell me what you see when you do.”
A little afraid, I opened my eyes.
I saw Master Vitas painted with magic, outlined with it, colored in with it. There was so much of it, not a bit of him uncovered.
“You see everything coated, don’t you?”
“Do you see the world like this, Master?”
“First. Stop with the master. I’m Vitas. I’m only twenty years older than you are, and I shouldn’t be a master any more than you should. It’s only because I have so damn much of the magic that I’m here.
“Second, yes. I can see the world this way. The rumor you’ve heard about me being born using magic isn’t far from the truth. I saw the world painted with magic when I was just eight. It took me years to learn to control it. You won’t take nearly as long.”
“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.