by Lindsey Duncan
in Issue 131, December 2022
This time, Dossian Braeth wasn’t even participating when the spell exploded. That was the problem.
“Sister Sherrit’s left toe,” the instructor of constructs barked, picking himself up from behind his desk, “what a waste of material. Were none of you paying attention?”
A younger boy whimpered. He had been struck by the head of the puppet they were trying to animate. “It wasn’t my fault.”
Dossian remained still, hoping if he made no sound, he would fade from insignificance into invisibility.
A dark-haired girl glared. “What were you waiting for, Dossian? Thunder and fanfare?”
“I – err – you see,” Dossian explained. He looked at his hands, seeking the culprit in an imaginary eleventh digit. His drum had rolled under the desk. Most of his classmates used mouth-clicks or foot-tapping; it was embarrassing to be stuck with an instrument, but not so much he wanted to ruin a spell.
Not that it had done any good. He wished Callia were here.
“I lost the beat,” he said. The students sniggered.
The instructor quelled them with a look. “Master Braeth,” he said, “you’re an aspiring rhythmist, are you?”
In Dossian’s experience, this was invariably a trick question. He tried to look earnest rather than sarcastic. With his face – big and blowsy and brown – this wasn’t hard. “Yes. I want to craft spells.”
“Then I would point out,” the instructor said, voice building, “that for a rhythmist, losing the beat is something like a cavalryman losing his horses, or an astronomer losing the sky …” The words became a powerful, surging beat. The others stood by, relishing the tongue-lashing.
Dossian wished he could evaporate. “Sir -“
The door opened. “I say,” said a mild voice, “whatever happened here?”
The speaker was Headmaster Orlan Besh, a spindly man with the coppery skin of Glassdune natives. If the students made fun of his accent, mushing his vowels together, they never did it to his face.
“Accident,” the instructor said curtly.
Orlan arched a brow. “Dossian, with me.”
Dossian retrieved his drum and went gratefully, eager to escape. He scuttled along in the headmaster’s wake, gold-furred head bobbing, the instrument bouncing on the strap over his shoulder.
“You’re a good young man,” Orlan said.
Dossian waited for the “but.” When it didn’t come, he ventured, “It got away from me. I thought it was too early to come in, and then it was too late. Headmaster, the instructor said something about my sense of rhythm. If I graduate, can I really hold a job the way -” he hesitated “- the way I am?”
“You make it sound like a disease.” If Orlan was amused, it was compassionate. “Rhythm can be learned intellectually, lad. What can’t be taught is the gift for sensing vibrations, feeling the spell as you shape it. You did well with that relocation spell I taught you.”
Of course, Dossian thought, the headmaster had taught him the spell in case he had to disappear from battle. It was not exactly a vote of confidence.
“If you’re unsure,” Orlan continued, “perhaps you should delay taking the final exam.”
Dossian shook his head. “I did that last year. My family expects me to try this time.”
“Do they?” Orlan’s gaze was intent, and Dossian tried not to blush. The other truth was his sweetheart had promised an energetic celebration.
“I’m all right as long as I’m alone,” Dossian said. “I just can’t work with others.”
“Sometimes necessary.” Orlan hmmed. “I am not one to suppress a man’s ambitions. I suppose you’re off to study?”
Dossian ducked his head, mumbled something that might be taken for agreement but was not technically a lie, and hurried away.
The windows were open, letting in the harsh nip of early spring and a stunning view. The city of Trest strutted like an icy peacock, buildings dusted with remnant snow. Beyond was Neve Pass, suspended in magical, stormless peace to allow the passage of traders. Dossian had never met a Snowweaver, but he had gawped at several. Something that looked human, but with translucent skin and you could see its internals floating about – that deserved a bit of gawping.
He quickened his pace as he reached the student courtyard. Callia bounded across the stones and landed in his arms, a flash of redheaded lightning. He hugged her and leaned in for a kiss, but her lips were flat and closed.
Dossian pulled back to study her, concerned. He felt entirely justified in his belief that Callia Ruis was the most beautiful woman in Trest. She had full, dark eyes, almost black, elemental wells from which extraordinary emotions sprung. Now they were angry.
“The king rejected my petition,” she said.
He guided her into the shelter of the trees. “Why did he do that?” She had petitioned the king to shut down trade with the Snowweavers, demand they remain on the far side of the pass.
Callia jerked like flame. “Because he’s too greedy to realize the Snowweavers tax us in the blood of innocents. People like my dear friends -“
Dossian rubbed her back. “I’m sorry. I know.” The married pair – local weavers, known to Callia since her first year here – had disappeared during a trade festival, their bodies found a week later frozen stiff. It seemed like an accident to him, and the city guard had agreed, but he trusted his beloved. “Is there anything you want me to do? I’ll break into the king’s bedchamber if that’s what you need.”
The ire in her eyes dimmed. She chuckled, bumping his chin with her forehead. “Making me laugh isn’t going to help.”
“I’m serious,” he said, and meant it – not so much the specifics, but he had no limits if it would help her.
“It would kill your career,” she said.
“What career?” he countered.
The same could not be said of her. Callia had graduated two years ago and specialized in barrier techniques. She was on her way to becoming the foremost expert in barrier spells.
“You wouldn’t do anything more than disturb the royal beauty sleep,” she said. “King Byoreth needs plenty of that, and if there were a sleep of intelligence…”
She had started out calmly, but then she was ranting. To soothe her, he tipped her head up for a kiss. It was welcoming this time, warm and tart.
Electricity stung him – not the romantic kind, but a smart of lightning in his mouth. Callia yelped and jumped back. “Dossian!” She studied him wryly. “Students playing pranks on you again? How do you stand it?”
“There’s no point in getting worked up,” he said. “Anyhow, every time someone works magic on me, it’s less effective. I could leave here immune to everyone in the school.”
“You’re already immune to them,” she said proudly.
He settled on a bench; she perched on his lap. He bent his head against hers, content to breathe in the scent of her hair. She made him feel necessary, and he loved her for the otherwise impossible. He had asked, once, why she cared for him; her response had been, “You make me feel as if I’ve come home.”
“How are your notes coming?” she asked.
“Great,” he said. “I think I’ve identified the main patterns of the instructors and most of the better students. Everyone has their own idiom, a style, something that’s best for the way they render the beat and their personality.”
Callia laughed, snuggling against his enthusiasm. “That’s amazing. So much work.”
“It’d be more amazing if I weren’t doing it because I have to copy others,” he said ruefully. “I haven’t made so much as a thumbprint of my own.”
“You’ll be fine,” she said. “Could I borrow them?”
“Of course. For what?”
“I’ve been trying to improve my protective barriers,” she said. “It would be great if I could experiment with other styles.” Her personal method of producing rhythm was palm to palm, a wonderful staccato clap.
“Take them. Please.”
“I’d like to practice something else now.” There was a sly light in her eyes. “It’s been a while since I’ve put up a privacy barrier.”
Dossian didn’t see Callia much over the next weeks, which was good for his study habits. As exam day drew nearer, the couple escaped to the southern hills, cold enough they joked about frostbite.
They talked about the usual things. Both had farming backgrounds, though Dossian’s family had urged him out the door of a potato farm, and Callia had run away from her cotton-farming family. Both loved accounting, mathematics, the mysteries of numbers. He had been delighted to discover someone else shared his fascination with migratory birds.
Callia’s eyes drifted towards Neve Pass, and she shivered. “I think of Lele and the snow-lace she used to weave … I don’t like being in its shadow.”
He tightened his hold on her. “The Twins will make sure there is a balance.”
She crinkled her nose. “We can’t always rely on gods.”
The month didn’t start well for Dossian. In his fumbling haste, he knocked one of the porcelain statues off his bedside shrine.
He dropped to one knee and gabbled, “Brother Vethin, forgive me a harmless accident …” All the while, he was more concerned that, as the two siblings shared the elements of duality – light and dark, thought and action – and demonstrated that nothing could truly be separated from its opposite … well, he hoped it was Sherrit’s turn to deliver positive outcomes.
Then things got worse.
The first thing Dossian noticed when he nosed out into the corridor was the bone-biting cold. He yelped, rubbed his arms, and started to duck back in for his coat when the sight outside the window transfixed him.
Neve Pass steamed.
After a moment, he realized it wasn’t steam: it was centuries of storms, held back by magic, now pouring into the pass. The tumbling clouds obscured the mountains. Dossian stared, then hurried to the dining hall, where some enterprising student would surely have the answers.
The room roared, students gabbling at the top of their lungs and shouting irritably when someone else was too loud or some insignificant fact inaccurate. Dossian navigated the fray, ears perked.
“… wiped out the trader camp! Most people managed to get out, but the Snowweavers must have been buried under -“
“Three hundred years of pent-up storms oozing down the pass.”
“She put up a barrier. Her allies are hiding behind it.”
Dossian nibbled on a breakfast roll. He’d gotten jelly on his elbow by unknown contortions. He scanned the hall, looking for a certain face. A premonition in the pit of his stomach told him he wasn’t going to see it.
“What do you think the Snowweavers will do?”
“If their spines are as hard as their ice, declare war.”
“Even if they’re not,” said a nearby student, “how could they not take this as an act of war? Their people died out there, and they’re bound to blame Trest.”
“It’s not like they can get to us anymore.”
“The snows are their territory. They’ll find a way.”
“What about the effects of the storms on this side?”
Dossian leaned in. “Who started all this?”
The three nearest speakers jumped guiltily and took any excuse to look elsewhere. One said, “You haven’t heard?”
“That’s a stupid question,” another scoffed. “If he knew it was Callia, he wouldn’t be asking, would he?”
Dossian’s first reaction was a burst of pride: she had done it, made her move against the beings who had killed her friends, and he admired her, was in awe of the risk she had taken.
She had left him behind.
His heart let out a sigh that beat his ribcage and then slunk away unvoiced. He understood. She’d always been more than he was, her presence an inexplicable fire in his life. The choice he had never imagined her making seemed perfectly reasonable in hindsight.
He accepted it, but he felt small and transparent. And worried.
There were no classes that morning. The best and brightest – post-graduate specialists like Callia – were called to meetings with the headmaster and senior instructors. By lunchtime, the academy buzzed with the news that three attempts had been made to dig Callia out of her demesne in Neve Pass, and each had failed.
The headmaster called Dossian to the library after lunch. He hoped he was not to be assigned to the next mission. No one had come back with more than bruises and scrapes, but if Callia wanted his hide, he was obliged to give it over.
The library was massive, made a labyrinth by sparse light and shelves that stretched to the three-story ceiling. Dossian followed the glare from the window overlooking the courtyard.
“Ah, Dossian!” Orlan rose from a gilt chair. A fire blazed in the hearth. “I’m waiting for the king, but this won’t take long.”
Dossian swallowed. “What won’t?”
“I’m sure news has reached you by now that our latest dilemma was brought upon us by Callia Ruis,” Orlan said. “She’s your sweetheart, is she not?”
“Yes.” He shrank further. “Err, was, sir.”
“The rhythmists who faced her report she seems to be immune to them,” he said. “As near as we can tell, she used a mirror barrier to reflect bits of their rhythms back on herself until she built up resistance. What I can’t work out – what no one can – is how she was able to mimic every significant figure in the school. That kind of research would take years, and she only started pulling references a few weeks ago.”
Dossian’s mind scurried about like a broken-winged bird. “Oh.”
“You were close to her. Do you have any idea?”
He couldn’t see the sense in saying it. It wasn’t as if they could reverse the effects of the spell by knowing its source, and he didn’t want to get in trouble. The headmaster might be inclined to believe he hadn’t known – hadn’t he shown himself to be less than perceptive? – but he could also be thrown out of the school, and there were exams to think about.
“No idea, sorry,” he said.
Orlan heaved a sigh. “It was worth the asking.”
“Can I ask a question?” Dossian said. “Who went with her?”
“Four students, all known for their high scores,” Orlan said. “Aragel, Mitraim, Tiffari and Gera. We’ve tried to contact them, to no avail. They must be maintaining the barrier spell while she sleeps.”
Dossian winced. The two boys had long-standing crushes on Callia, Tiff was a rabble-rouser, and Gera would follow whatever lead she was given. It was a neat little crew, and he tried not to imagine what they were doing up there in the blizzard-racked snow.
Orlan must have seen something in his face, for he patted Dossian’s shoulder. “I know it’s hard, but you’re better off on the outside.” He seemed about to say more when the herald entered and announced the royal presence.
“Send him in. Dossian, stay here. I want to speak with you further.” Orlan rose.
Dossian froze, mind scurrying anew at the idea of being in the presence of a king. He made himself as small as possible.
King Byoreth was a big, bristly man, draped in the ornamental excess of veridian robes. “Headmaster,” he said, “this is a disaster. The Snowweavers would be screaming for reprisal, if we had any way to hear them. Rhythmist, royalty, the humans of Trest are behind this as far as they’re concerned.”
“I don’t disagree, your highness,” Orlan said. “A terrible business.” He was not volunteering, Dossian noticed, that the matter was caused by their rhythmist, and felt slightly better about his own omission.
“You must stop it,” Byoreth said. “I will pay the academy three years of Snowweaver profit.”
Dossian squawked. Both men fixed him with hard looks – Orlan squelching, Byoreth annoyed. He backed into the shelf and heard books thump precariously.
“You must understand it may be impossible,” Orlan said. “The rhythmists who hold that pass may have no equal in the whole world. We’ve already lost a junior instructor.”
This was news to Dossian, and it made his skin feel too small for his veins. People had died, not just in the stormfall, but in face-to-face conflict. He had never thought Callia capable of that.
“We will lose other lives if the storms pour through the pass to the city,” Byoreth said, “and many more if it becomes war. Make it possible.”
Orlan bowed his head. “We will do our utmost.”
The king stared, his brows clashing like armies. He whirled and stalked away.
The headmaster sighed. “I suppose we can look into land in Perici, or perhaps Dhone – good vineyards there.” He smiled wryly at Dossian. “Even if we can overcome her immunity, I won’t risk more promising rhythmists to a lost cause. Her fight is with the Snowweavers, not us. Put up a show for Byoreth and then let it go. We have sentries watching the barrier, but that requires their attention to waver, so best not to gamble on that.”
“Yes, headmaster.” Something about it seemed wrong to Dossian. He chewed it over, fighting to phrase it. But what right had he to question?
“Not so sure, are you?” Orlan’s voice became chiding. “It’s no different than taking the exam not because you think you’re ready, but because you don’t want to disappoint your family.”
Heat flushed through Dossian, until he nearly feared his eyebrows would catch on fire. Pride mauled, he said, “There’s a difference, headmaster. I’m going to try my hardest.”
Orlan’s head jerked back. His eyes widened with surprise; then the expression softened into something Dossian couldn’t read. “A point,” he said softly. “That is different.”
After a long silence, Dossian felt he should speak. “Is there anything else, headmaster?”
“No, that will do.”
In his efforts to avoid thinking about it, Dossian studied fiendishly, but some things had to be faced.
He could no longer cheer Callia on, even in the privacy of his head. People had died when the enchantment on the Pass unraveled, its beats grounding into the earth. Perhaps she hadn’t known that would happen. Perhaps the instructor had died because she was defending herself. Perhaps, added the inner voice that knew the nature of her magics, how easily she could trap and contain rather than harm … not.
The unleashed storms would cause further damage. She must be standing amidst the evidence. The Snowweavers would want revenge. She must know that, when she had studied their string of murders.
If there had ever been murders, not just accidents. He tried to think. The bruise marks on the smith’s ribs were presumably from a beating, but could they be from fallen ice? What of the children who simply never reappeared?
There was a chance Callia was doing the right thing and didn’t know the rest, but he couldn’t let himself consider that. He would hold to it and soon be unable to believe anything else. It would make whatever happened that much harder to bear.
One thing he clung to: she had not chosen him for this. She might have used him, but their love had not been a calculated plan. Borrowing his notes had been act of opportunity, and however it ached, it didn’t erase what they had shared.
Word came that a graduating student from the next class would be sent to face Callia, and the instructors seemed, if not confident, then appropriately hopeful for a different outcome. Dossian knew it wouldn’t be him; he wouldn’t match the scores of the others.
Three days later, it started to snow and never stopped. Snowmen, the handiwork of junior student, littered the courtyard and outdoor spaces in an unruly mob. When howling winds came down, it looked like a battlefield of the fallen. Anxious, fearful, the students crossed it like scavengers. The instructors seemed to have one foot out the door.
Dossian had expected taunts, but there were few. He figured most thought his sweetheart abandoning him was demeaning enough; others had never noticed him in Callia’s shadow. He was content to leave it that way. The other students preparing for the exam were heaped with praise or criticism. They were heroes or sacrificial lambs. Dossian was simply invisible.
He prayed, somewhat hampered by the fact he didn’t know what to pray for. Sometimes it was unrealistic:
“Brother Vethin, Sister Sherrit, turn back time so this never happened.”
Other times it was unhelpfully vague:
“Brother Vethin, Sister Sherrit, fix this so no one else gets hurt.”
On the morning of the exam, he drummed over simple spells a final time. He kept making his adjustments too small, and the pattern would hardly change, or too large, and it would waver on an ear-disrupting, nauseating pitch bothersome only to rhythmists.
His neighbor threw something at the wall. “Dossian!”
He only had to complete seven of twelve spells in the allotted time to pass. He was as ready as he was ever going to be.
The first part of the exam was written: rules of magic, theory and history. It was, if not easy, the part about which Dossian was most confident. He snuck a glance at the six students with him and wondered who would be going up the pass.
Focus, Dossian, focus.
The second part of the exam involved identification. An instructor shaped a series of spells partway and the student called out their purpose. Dossian ended up working with the instructor of constructs.
The man glowered. “Well, if it isn’t the destroyer of golems! Have you found your rhythm yet?”
The thought flitted through his head that no, his rhythm had been stolen by his sweetheart and was now being used to hold Neve Pass. “I believe I have, sir.”
The instructor grunted. The enchantments he set for Dossian were rapid, obscure and complex. Dossian squinted, scrabbled frantically at the mustiest recesses of his brain, sweated and finally – in some cases – guessed. Occasionally the instructor smirked, giving hints he had missed points.
Dossian was shaking with effort when the instructor dismissed him. The ten minute break was not long enough to get his focus back. He scuttled to the door, intending to plunge his face in the snow – that would shock him into awareness – but a burly instructor blocked the way.
“You’re not allowed out,” he said.
“I couldn’t pass the answers to another student. I’m not even sure what they are.”
The instructor stared impassively until he retreated.
The third part of the exam was the practical portion. Under the watchful eyes of another instructor, he stumbled through the spells, breaking two, and finishing an eighth with seconds left.
He oozed out of the testing chamber, crossed the academy in a fog, and came to the student courtyard. It was only after standing there for several minutes, numb, waiting, that he remembered he was alone, no one was coming to meet him, no smile like sunlight to warm him.
He shuddered. He made a show of stamping his feet for warmth, then fled to his room, feeling like a ghost. Exam or no exam, where did he go from here?
Exam results weren’t due until the next morning, so Dossian was unnerved when Orlan Besh called him to the headmaster’s office. Dossian stood with hands folded, resisting the impulse to launch into a preventative explanation of his many faults.
“You’re headed for Neve Pass, Dossian,” Orlan said.
Dossian blinked, astonishment overriding other emotions. “I got the highest score?”
Orlan chuckled. “No. Two of your peers had a perfect score; another had ninety-five percent. One flunked out. But what we need here is not the very top – those are the people Callia guarded herself against. No, what we need is the middle rank.”
While he might be confident of his ability to be mediocre, the implications left Dossian stammering. “Headmaster, I don’t think I’m the right person for this.”
“Because of your connection to our rogue?” The headmaster arched a brow.
“That’s part of it,” Dossian said, “but I can think of at least six other reasons that make me a lousy choice.”
“There’s such a thing as too much honesty, Dossian.”
“If I were being too honest, I’d say a hundred.”
Orlan laughed heartily, then turned serious. Dossian decided not to point out he hadn’t been joking. “Rather than numbering lists, consider this. You know her as few people do. If anyone knows how to read her tactics, it would be her beloved.”
Former beloved, Dossian added inwardly, heart squeezing. It was pain too barbed to be ripped to the surface. “I’m, uh -” He stopped, unable to come up with a better way of voicing his objections other than, “Do I have to?” and he wasn’t about to say that.
“I’m sorry, lad, but you have no choice,” Orlan said. “The staff voted that whoever took the middle ranking would go. If this doesn’t succeed and our graduates don’t come through, the academy has to leave Trest. If you don’t make the attempt, you are not welcome as a rhythmist.”
It was so pleasant Dossian missed it at first. The trade-off between livelihood and life wasn’t fair, but when he tried to imagine himself as anything else, his brain failed him. “I can try.”
“As you so aptly put it before,” Orlan agreed. “The task is not insurmountable. If you can distract her, the barrier may weaken enough for us to break through. I will be your personal tutor as you prepare these next three days, and I’m sure victory is in sight.”
Dossian swallowed. “Yes, headmaster.”
It quickly occurred to Dossian there was one significant problem: he had no unique rhythm pattern, and Callia had the evidence of the ones he had learned. It was too late to confess his part in that, so he decided the easiest way to handle it was to let his stomach gnaw through itself.
It was the easiest way, not necessarily the best.
The headmaster worked him hard. Orlan tried to disguise the fact he wasn’t satisfied with his student’s progress, but it showed through in flashes of grimace. Dossian considered running, but an ice-fog blew up the second morning and ended that idea.
The last night, as he tried to put his affairs in order – there was a letter on his desk stipulating where his possessions should be given and the kinds of lies people should tell about him – it suddenly occurred to Dossian whose pattern he could use.
In the fight between warmth and being able to move faster than a waddle, agility won out – barely.
Garbed in woolen underwear, a thick overshirt, a sweater, a coat and a long cloak, plus three scarves shoved in through openings, Dossian trudged up Neve Pass. He was supposed to being going subtly, which meant no magic. The wind beat down upon him until he was convinced he was going backwards.
After almost an hour, he spotted the plateau. The bright blue glow of the barrier danced at the edge.
Dossian removed his gloves and dusted the snow off his drum. His heart had already started the rhythm for him. He had no shield-spell; impossible for him to learn anything in three days that she could not shred with ease. He had rehearsed brave speeches, but they stuck in his throat.
He felt the tell-tale quiver of a spell in time to duck. A shower of ice spikes sprayed over his head.
“Why have you come here?”
She stood on the far side of the barrier, shimmering blue, shimmering gold, a vibrating form, a woman carved in diamond. Her voice was louder than the storm.
Dossian tensed, his fingers curling against the drum. “Why did you do this?”
Callia bounded through the barrier and brought her hands together in a rapid series of claps. She flew down on an icy draft and landed before him. The shadows in her eyes challenged him. “You know why. Go back. Tell the rhythmists I don’t want to fight them, but I’ll defend the barrier.”
“Did you mean people to die when the enchantment fell? Did you mean them to die when the storms reached Trest?” He was almost surprised to hear himself ask. “Do you know the Snowweavers may go to war?”
“Let them.” The crack of her palms sounded like an avalanche. Another flurry of ice-shards surged towards him, but parted on either side at the last second. A warning. “I knew the cost might be high. It had to be done. Justice for Lele. For all the slain.”
Dossian knew two things in that moment: she had made an unconscionable choice, and she believed with all her soul it had been the right thing to do. He tried to back off, give himself space to act, but footing was treacherous and he slipped on a patch of ice.
Callia narrowed her eyes. “I don’t want to hurt you, Dossian.”
She started a pattern at the same time he did. Cold and nerves made him fumble; his dissolved into chaotic ripples. Her binding spell wrapped around his ankles and surged upwards. He barely managed to disrupt it, tapping out patterns with the drum that canceled out its vibrations.
Callia sighed. “Doss …”
On the plateau above, four figures appeared: her allies, Aragel wary, Tiffari smirking. Mitraim and Gera were in dialogue – discussing whether to intervene? Dossian’s spine prickled. They could tear him apart.
He started anew, the beats growing stronger. Callia ignored it, forming a rumble of sleep. Again, she was faster, and his eyelids started to droop. He fought to finish. A bright flash of light flooded the pass, and she cried out as she covered her eyes. The others cringed backwards.
Callia wobbled in the snow. She regained her balance in time to disrupt his next spell, but as her gaze cleared, she stared. “My patterns,” she said. “You’re using my patterns.”
“Of course,” he said. “Whose do I know better?”
They traded spells, both trying to bind and slow. She knocked him on his back with a wind; he yelped as he fell over, but tapped his way into the gale and sent it rushing back towards her.
She cried out as her body hit a protruding rock.
Dossian’s mind flashed alarm. He scrambled to his feet, breathing heavily, frantic, as he hunted for her. She was all right; he hadn’t seriously hurt her. He had the advantage, a few seconds before she recovered or her allies came to her defense.
The pain in his heart leapt up into his head by way of his throat, blurring his vision. He still loved her. He admired her courage to throw everything into her beliefs, whatever the outcome. It didn’t matter she had abandoned him. That reflected on his weakness, not hers.
He stepped forward, the ice crunching beneath his feet. She flinched away.
“I’m not fighting you,” he said. “You win.”
Callia surged towards him, and he jerked still, afraid of the attack. Her body hit his and held on. She buried her head in his shoulder. He felt the sobs before he heard them and instinctively clutched her close.
“I didn’t want to leave you behind,” she said into his neck, “but I knew there was no going back and it would be dangerous, and I couldn’t do that to you – or risk that you would die here. I’m sorry I didn’t explain, couldn’t explain …”
At the corner of his world, Dossian noticed her allies advancing, even as the barrier flickered. He bent his head over hers.
“You could have trusted me,” he said, carefully, gently.
Callia laughed, brittle. “It was never about that. I’ve always trusted you. But you shouldn’t have come. As long as I didn’t see you, I was fine. I could leave it all behind and not care.”
“I don’t want you to do that,” he said.
She shook her head. “Too late. What I’ve planned doesn’t allow for retreat.”
Above on the plateau, Aragel and Mitraim wore similar expressions of resignation. They both, Dossian remembered, had feelings for Callia. He wondered what she had suggested to convince them to join her, but he couldn’t make himself anxious about that.
“You’re ridiculous,” Tiffari said. “Some rebel you are, falling into the arms of the enemy just because you used to know him.”
“That’s not what’s going on,” Callia said, but her voice wavered and cracked.
Tiffari stared, hard and angry. “Yes, it is.”
“If it isn’t,” Aragel said, “then finish him off.”
Dossian swallowed a yelp, torn whether to cling to Callia or back off for safety. She straightened, rage in her expression. “You dare …”
Her barrier flared again, man-sized holes appearing in its surface. The rumbling of another spell approached like a storm, raising the hairs on the back of his neck, and slammed into the weak points. The academy rhythmists had seen an opening and taken it. Callia hissed a curse and slammed her hands together, but there was too much force to stop. The barrier rifted apart, dissipating in a flash of icy light.
“And now we’re defenseless,” Tiffari said. “I’m not sticking around for that.” She stalked down the plateau, the men trailing in her wake. Gera followed, because they were the majority, and that was Gera.
Stunned, Callia watched their progress. She had obviously never expected desertion. Dossian stared, equally bewildered, and trying to figure out how their actions had led to this. It had not been in his mind at all.
Callia lifted her gaze into the muttering black of the sky. She bent her fingers around another spell, but the cold hindered her hands, and she released it. “Three centuries of storms,” she said, “and I could accelerate their fury, but we wouldn’t survive. And the academy would still stop it, without my barrier.”
Dossian was just as glad she wasn’t ready to sacrifice them both. “Let it go.”
Her brow furrowed, lightning snaps of thought in her eyes as she tried to work out another way. He held his breath, not sure what he hoped for.
Finally, she released a bone-rattling sigh. “Now what?” she said. “There’s only one way out of the pass, and it’s guarded. It would take hours for me to work the reflection spell on you, and the rhythmists won’t give us enough time.” Her fingers dug into his shoulder; it would have hurt but for the mountain of fabric.
His heart twittered with joy. For once, he had the solution. “There’s another way,” he said. “The headmaster taught me a relocation spell in case I had to flee – err, retreat tactically.”
“Dossian!” She kissed him soundly, her relief pouring into their shared breath. She pulled back, dark eyes searching his. “Thank you, love.”
“Don’t thank me,” he said. “I don’t want to go back. I’m in trouble now, too.”
She laughed and took one of his hands. “Since you’re using my patterns, we should do this together. Talk me through it?”
He had no idea where they would go or what they would do, but an answer would present itself. He explained the enchantment and they began, drumming themselves out of Trest and everything they had known except each other.
It was the first time a spell he performed with others was flawless.
© December 2022, Lindsey Duncan
Lindsey Duncan’s soft science fiction novel Scylla and Charybdis was released in 2018 from Gimbold Books. Her short fiction has appeared in numerous publications including Abyss and Apex, Andromeda Spaceways, and Daily Science Fiction. This is her first appearance in Swords & Sorcery.