Both of them gasped after the wave had passed.
“I've never felt magic like that before,” Rilen said.
“Now I understand why each of the tremors was wrong.” I pulled my horse onto the dirt trail that led to the cave.
“I understand, too. We can't allow just one part of the magic to rule all of the others.” Roran pulled his horse to a halt at the mouth of the cave.
“They only contained a single color, one emotion only,” Rilen continued his brother’s thought.
Rilen leapt off his horse. “So the job of the Breaker was to reject all opportunities to break the Spine by individual color and emotion.”
I nodded. “The very first tremor was an absence of color. The next seven tremors were only the individual parts of magic.”
“And now,” Rilen said, “this eighth set is the completion of color.”
Roran looked up as another wave of white magic rolled down at us. “It's only when the magic is whole—because white contains every color of the rainbow—that the Spine can actually be broken properly.”
“Balance,” I said. “Just as you are two halves of a whole, so the magic is broken into parts of a whole. If any one part is missing, it unbalances everything.”
We ducked into the cave, taking horses to the trough. Hitching their reins to the tie line, the three of us quickly descended into the cavern.
The walls were pure white. It was nearly blinding. Placing a hand on one of the crystals, I asked the light to decrease so we could actually see.
Welcome! The Spine is yours to command.
It was amazing to hear the magic so clearly, to understand what it wanted me to do. Without moving my hand from the wall, I slipped in toward the center of the cave, and I could feel every part of the rock trembling with anticipation.
I looked at the two men standing in the mouth of the cavern. I motioned them to me. “Put your palm on the crystal, and you'll be able to help me with this. I have the feeling I may get lost in the magic, and I need you both to ground me.”
Without hesitation, Rylan and Roran were next to me, and not only did they put their hands on the crystal wall, but they also put a hand on my shoulder.
It is time.
I heard them both gasp, but my attention was taken. I was given the details of what I was about to do to a mountain that had stood for millennia.
Starting far in the north, I began to coax the rock to slide gently toward the ocean. I made sure, as much as I could, that the mountain slipped off to either the east or west without destroying anything. I made room for even more of the rockfall that was about to come.
Massive peak after massive peak, slab after slab, boulder after boulder, I guided and led the Spine down from its heights into its ocean grave.
The more I brought down, the further it spread into the ocean, adding more and more to the land of the North Landing.
The rocks slid into the gap left by the previous slabs and were then pushed further toward the north.
I was creating an indelible scar on the land that would never be flat or flush and would always have peaks and valleys. The Spine had been a wound on the land for millennia, and there was no way to fully heal it.
It was, in the long run, better that we not forget our world was once divided. The Spine had been raised to sever the ties between the druids and the vampires.
It hadn't been raised to such heights for no reason.
I wasn't trying to heal it. The scar would always remind us there had been a Spine dividing the two halves of S’Kir.
And now it was time for the two halves of our world to join together and be one land again.
I kept directing more and more of the mountain as it fell into the trench left behind. Eventually, I reached our protective little cave, and the land shifted to protect us from the fall of rocks.
Slowly, slowly, I worked my way down the Spine, past the city, and all the way down to the south.
When I reached the very southern tip of the land, I understood why someone had to break the Spine, why there had to be someone to control where the rocks fell.
