I’d never owned a black dress.

Lunella chuckled and brought me one from her closet.

“We’ll get you plenty more. I’ve made a few when I couldn’t find something that worked.”

“Do we always have to wear black in public?”

“Oh, no, not at all! Black is our… hmm. I guess you could say our working color. Just like the style we wear is our working style. No one expects you to wear a dress while you’re at the carnivals!”

“A relief,” I mumbled.

She poked my shoulder. “I’ve seen your closet, Kimber. You also need to spice up your regular clothes as well. How did Elex put it? Every exciting shade of beige you could imagine!”

“That bastard…”

But I was grinning. He might be a bastard, but he was my bastard, and having him around was a lot of fun.

I picked a few stray hairs and threads off the robes of the station—they were nothing more than a fancy embroidered stole with a hood—and brushed them flat.

Again.

I was nervous. More nervous than I had ever been before. The black dress hid most of my tremors of fear, but I had clenched my hands to keep them from shaking.

The private ceremony at the temple a week before was really just a ritual breakfast. There was a small short ceremony where I signed my name to the Roster of Masters and the others sealed it with their magic.

After, everyone got drunk at the usual breakfast and wandered off at some point. The word anti-climactic was probably not strong enough.

But the ceremony I was preparing for now? That was the real deal. The one where the people of S’Kir were introduced to their new temple mistress. Where I had to sit on the council and hear complaints and make judgments with the others.

Being new, I wouldn’t be charged with hearings on my own for a few years yet. I was required to sit when the council was impaneled.

“You’re still shaking,” Mistress Maurielle said, grabbing my hands.

“I’m being announced as a master. It’s not what I wanted. It’s not what I dreamed. Teaching was always enough for me.”

Mistress Sora put a hand on my shoulder. “You will be fine. It’s because you are a teacher that the people will be overjoyed to find you here.”

“There are only three cases we will hear today, ceremonially,” Mistress Ophelia said from her seat. “We’ll be there less than an hour.”

I shook my head. “And then I get to go to the training garden and have Master Dorian beat the shit out of me again.”

Lunella chuckled. “It’s not Dorian this time. It’s the five of us.”

“We are all unique,” Mistress Maurielle said. “And if you watch each of us, you will slowly find your own unique brand of magic.”

 Lunella straightened my stole one more time. “The only person I have ever seen with magic as intricately woven as a female’s is Master Dorian. I fully believe his first teacher was a woman, be it mother or wife or sister.”

Drawing a sharp breath, I jerked toward her. “Wait. So the bending I saw in Master Dorian’s magic—”

Mistress Sona nodded. “Is not the way men wield power at all. He is unique.”

I chuckled. “That’s why the other men have trouble fighting him. They can’t work magic like he can.”

Ophelia nodded. “It’s why they don’t like fighting us.”

Lunella laughed. “They can’t figure out our knots and bends and loops when we use it. Every woman is shown how magic works by not less than three other women.”

“The Triium…”

My teaching was already handy in sorting myth from fact. The Triium was a mid-schooling history lesson, about three female magic wielders who had taught Mistress Eiorenne—one of the oldest, most beloved temple masters. She had died centuries ago in a terrible rock fall from the southern Spine.

Before her, females were never as strong as males. The simple, brute force males used to wield more powerful magic wasn’t possible for a woman.

The Triium, a set of three women whose names were lost to time—or maybe never even known—had each defeated the temple masters on their own to reach Eiorenne, the daughter of Master Wilkes.

They took Eiorenne to the Southern Sea to show her how they had learned to wield magic and she found her own, different way to do it.

To return to the temple, she had to defeat each of the fourteen masters there, including her own father.

She did. Easily. And the fifteenth seat of the council was created.

Lunella waggled her eyebrows. “Did you think they stopped with just Eiorenne? Oh, no. They taught every woman they could how to wield their power. And of all of the men who watched and tried to mimic what we could do, only Dorian was able to learn it.”

Ophelia nodded sagely. “And now, we own half the council. As it should be.”

“As it should,” the others chorused.

These women were powerful and were nothing to be trifled with, and they were willing to teach me to be just like them.

Somewhere, in the back of my mind, I started to want that. I began to want to learn, to be more than a teacher. More than just the naïve friend who had no clue about the giant spy network that her friends were part of.

More than just a simple magician who entertained with a dancing flame in her palm.

More than the girl who walked into that cave.

More than the woman who took the robes.

More.

Sona smiled at me. “I think she gets it.”

 

*  *  *

 

Strings and strands of magic hung from Carolee’s hand.

“Balance,” Mistress Ophelia said. “For every strong man, there must be a strong woman.”

It was fascinating to watch Mistress Carolee control her magic. She used it so differently from Master Dorian and completely different from every other male I’d seen so far.

There was subtlety in her weavings, a play with the strings that Vitus and Master Argo had never shown me. They were right about the blunt force.

“Men are straight lines.” Lunella drew a line on the ground. “They are linear. Not more than one string of magic, not more than one line of thought, not more than one goal at a time.”

Mistress Sona took the stick from Lunella and carved the line into five pieces. “Yes, it is true that men make plans. Complex ones that can see five, ten, twenty steps ahead. In no way are we saying that men are incapable of complex thought. But in the execution of the plan, they are linear.”

“Women,” Mistress Maurielle said, taking the stick, “think in clusters. Act in clusters.”

She drew bubbles in the dirt as she slowly turned in a circle. “We don’t just think ahead. We think to the side and to the past. We keep tabs on all of those things as well.”

“In most cases,” Mistress Sona took the stick again, “the way we think about things connects the thoughts too, and we are surrounded by our thoughts.”

There was a full cloud around Mistress Maurielle.

“That is where your strength comes from,” Lunella said. She traveled around, pointing at the cloud that surrounded her fellow temple masters. “This ability to surround yourself and think—and work—non-linearly.”

I stared, amazed, at the ground around Mistress Maurielle. There was a cloud drawn in the ground that went all the way around her. Hearing these other women talk about how I thought, how I always had more than just one idea in my mind was… comforting.

As I watched, Mistress Maurielle brought strings of magic around the edges of the cloud, outlining it. She brought more, and there were diaphanous clouds of power between the strings as they rose from the ground.

The magic spun and looped lazily around her, creating almost a fog of colors and powers.

It was entrancing.

And then she nailed me right in the chest with it.

My feet left the ground, and I sailed through the air, backward. The wall I was going to hit would hurt my back all over again.

Time seemed to stop mid-flight. 

They had just shown me how they used the magic. They had shown me a cloud around them.

If I could do the same thing with the magic behind me, pillow it out, I wouldn’t hit the wall and might actually be able to stick my landing.

The magic was there on instinct, and I pulled two threads apart. The power floated between them and pushed on it.

It didn’t have time to pillow as much as I had wanted, but it was enough to keep me from slamming my entire spine against the brick.

I felt the bricks, but the hit was soft. I slipped down to gravel and managed to stand up and step away from the wall.

“Well.” Mistress Sona folded her arms, satisfied.

“Well done,” Mistress Ophelia said, not looking up.

Something about all this bothered me. “Are all women who have power taught in Triium?”

“If they are strong,” Lunella said.

“And if they are dedicated to the temple.” Mistress Sona added.

“I’m not strong, though.”

“You are a temple master now,” Mistress Carolee said. “You are also the Breaker of the Spine. You need to know.”

I walked over to a bench and sat down. “That doesn’t make sense.”

The five women in the garden exchanged looks.

“Think about it,” I offered. “I’m not strong, but I’ve been tutored by males and women who were trained by males. I never thought to approach magic differently.”

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.

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.”