Jey shouted, too far away to intercede. The dog flattened into a run, closing on her friend. The student, seeing her advantage, pressed her attack even harder.
There was a streak of red on the air – a tiny red blur. Phril appeared, zipping around a tree trunk, heading straight towards the attacking dog. He’d shifted back to his tiny size. Jey’s heart all but seized at the sight of her miniscule tessili hurling himself towards the much larger hound. Had he forgotten he was small again?
Jey’s advance faltered, her heart stuttering as her tiny tessila flew to the attack. If he dies, I die. The thought made her strangely cold.
But it didn’t happen as she’d feared.
The instant before reaching the dog, Phril shimmered, expanded, and solidified. There was a massive crash as the tessila’s sudden bulk and velocity met the dog’s charge and broke it. The dog gave a yip. The two animals tumbled until they hit a tree. Then Phril picked the dog up in his jaws and flung it away into the woods.
The student who’d been fighting Elle faltered in her attack to glance towards the sight of the massive Phril, once again as large as a horse and now smeared with blood. Jey looked for the arrow wounds, but the scales of his neck were smooth and unblemished. He’d somehow healed himself.
Elle did not allow herself to be distracted. In that bare instant of opening, she stepped within the reach of the staff, blocking a clumsy, belated swipe. Elle didn’t use her knife. She brought her empty hand to the girl’s head and released a powerful blast of magic, scrambling the girl’s wits and forcing her into unconsciousness.
The second student crumpled to the earth.
◈
“I don’t understand.” Jey spoke as she looked at Phril. The tessila was normal sized again, a small particle of color on the air. “He was shot. I saw him.”
Lokim grunted, heaving a pack onto his back. Elle was nearby, stowing her last few belongings. They’d retreated into the shelter to gather their things and wait for the academy to congregate its forces around what they would now believe was the entrance to the hideout. Then they would slip out by another exit.
Lokim rubbed at his head, where he’d apparently taken a hard blow to the skull. He couldn’t remember what had happened to him after leaving the shelter. He recalled waking to the sounds of fighting with Bliz gnawing through his bonds. He’d been unable to stand. There had been something wrong with his balance and he’d had a headache so fierce he’d been unable to keep his eyes open. “They heal when they change form,” Lokim said. “It’s what makes them so difficult to kill. Most of them can only shift once or twice a day. They have to be strategic about when they use the ability.”
Jey tied her crossbow to the outside of her pack. Her forehead was creased with a small frown. “Phril is never strategic about anything.” She glanced to the side as she spoke, eyes straying towards the dark form that lay on the far side of the hall – Treyam, wrapped in his coat, trying to steal a little bit of rest before they left to meet the other Tessilari. His sky blue tessila lay curled on his stomach, watching them with her glittering eyes.
Jey looked back at Lokim, propping her pack upright against her legs. “Bliz freed me first,” she said. “She came to me, made herself large enough to gnaw through my bonds and set me free. You were right there next to me, unconscious. But she helped me.”
Bliz was inside Lokim’s collar now, drowsing against the warmth of his skin. He felt a deep affection for his clever, sweet tessila. “She could see freeing you would do the most good. Unconscious, I couldn’t help myself, much less anyone else.”
Jey’s face seemed to darken again. Elle returned, moving from the storeroom where they’d stowed their food, her own pack bulging.
Jey spoke, something in her eyes sad. “Phril would never do anything so rational. For a moment there, I thought he was going to leave – to run off after the orderlies and refuse to stop until he’d killed them all.” She seemed to tremble at the thought.
Lokim didn’t let his own unease show. Phril, having just gained the ability to shift, was the largest tessila Lokim had heard of in recent times. If he went berserk, it would be a disaster.
“They’re all unique, Jey,” he said, as if reassuring her could ease his own anxiety.
Jey’s eyes seem to settle on the small blue tessila on Treyam’s chest. “Where was she, during the fight? Phril was trying to kill everyone.”
Lokim felt a pang of discomfort, brought on by old memories full of regret and nostalgia. “Nim is unusual,” he said. As he spoke, Treyam stirred, shifting into a sitting position and blinking around with bleary eyes. Lokim dropped his voice to a lower register. “She’s not aggressive.” As Jey stared at him in stunned incomprehension, he added. “She doesn’t fight or get angry. Ever.”
There was the rustle of the long coat and the soft sound of steps as Treyam walked across the hall to join them. His eyes flicked over Lokim in that appraising way that had always made him feel exposed. “Time to get back to the valley,” Treyam said.
Lokim looked at the man. He was exhausted – it showed in every line of his face, the stoop of his shoulders, the set of his jaw. He’d worked two major healings in a short span of time, not to mention all the magic he’d expended in his fight with the student. It was a wonder he was on his feet at all.
But then, Treyam had always been resilient.
Lokim looked aside, determined not to let the past affect the present. He touched the place on his skull again, where Treyam had healed him. He said, “Yes. We should go.”
◈
Jey walked through the forest, eyes on the terrain in front of her. As she moved she was aware of two remarkable things. First, her calf didn’t pain her at all. Second, Phril was happy.
There was no other way to describe it. Feeling the echo of his emotion made her realize she’d never felt him this way before. She’d felt him content, yes, certainly, and excited or pleased or grateful.
But this. Happiness was something different. It was a warm emotion. It seemed to glow inside her, giving her strength and confidence.
She was walking behind Treyam, following the bobbing hem of his strange coat. Lokim and Elle were behind her, side by side. The three of them carried packs. And around them, holding in a precise formation and moving on silent feet, walked the Tessilari.
Treyam, it turned out, was an advanced scout from the party that had been sent to meet them. They’d slipped out of the shelter together, skirted the hunters in the woods, and joined up with his people.
The other Tessilari were a varied bunch. There hadn’t been time for introductions. Behind, the whistles and bays had told them their foes were reorganizing. And Nylan was still with them.
Around her, Jey could feel the shimmer of magic. The Tessilari were holding two spells in place – a massive passive echo spell large enough to hide them all, and a passive barrier of the same size.
They were doing it collaboratively. Three Tessilari supported each spell. Jey could feel the way the weaves knit together, joining to form a protective dome far larger than any individual could have managed alone. It was a concept Jey had never considered before, and it stunned her – the idea that two people could share their magic.
The man, Treyam, stumbled stepping over a rock. Jey found herself stepping aside and coming up beside him as he regained his balance. His face still had that drawn look. He was exhausted, seeming hardly able to do anything beyond putting one foot in front of the other.
Jey, suspecting the wound in her own calf hade taken a lot out of him, felt the bite of guilt in her stomach. “Is there anything I can do to help you?”
Treyam glanced up as she spoke. Now that they were out of immediate danger, there was something light about his face – a sort of spark in his eyes and a turn of his mouth that suggested he was near smiling. His tessila rode on his shoulder now, dozing.
“Tell me how you taught your tessila to grow to such prodigious size.” In spite of his exhaustion, his tone was playful.<
br />
But Jey found herself flushing. After he’d killed the dog, Phril had wanted to take off after the dog’s handler. Jey had tried to tell him to stay, but he’d ignored her – so high on battle fever he’d been ready to defy her direct command. It had been Treyam’s tessila who had stopped him, somehow, flying into his face and hissing, flaring her wings and lowering her head to stare into his battle maddened eyes.
Phril had gone still. A shudder had rippled through him. At last he’d shifted back to his tiny size and flown to Jey. He’d been sleeping in her sleeve ever since.
“Today was the first time he ever changed size.” Jey said the words in a wondering tone. It seemed too much had happened for the short span of time that had passed since she’d gone out to hunt. There had been no discussion once they’d reached the Tessilari. Lokim had filled the leader in with a brief sketch of their circumstances. Then the party had moved out.
Now, Jey walked with them. She could feel the protective dome around them. The sounds of those who would hunt them were growing fainter, fading into the dim woods.
But although Phril was happy, Jey was not. With every step she took she felt a strange tug – a desire to go back, to find the two fallen girls, to tell them everything, to teach them how to escape the horrible life of slavery she’d left them to.
It wouldn’t help. She knew that. The moment Nylan got those two back to the academy, he’d pump them so full of drugs they would forget everything.
“What troubles you?” This question came from Treyam. He’d been watching her face, Jey realized. She looked up to see sincerity in his amber eyes.
Jey glanced behind her. Lokim and Elle were moving together, Lokim always pausing if Elle slowed.
Elle was safe now. At least Jey had achieved that much.
“I need to go.” Jey spoke the words, realization breaking in her mind, clear as the tree trunks around her. “I can’t leave them. I need to go back. I need to destroy that place.”
She stopped walking as she heard the truth in her own words. Around her, the Tessilari drifted to a halt. Jey realized she’d spoken louder than she’d meant to.
She glanced at Elle. Her friend’s face carried an expression that was both sad and resigned. She won’t try to stop me. The realization caught at Jey’s heart a little, but she pushed it aside.
Jey raised her voice. “Thank you, all, for your help. But I need to go back.” She took a step, moving away from Treyam, meaning to leave the protective circle of spellwork.
It was the leader who spoke. She was a middle-aged woman with silver streaked hair, gray eyes, and a brilliant green tessila. Her voice was firm but not hard. Her eyes were sharp, but not cruel. She said, “If you go now, you’ll die alone. You will help no one.”
The statement hadn’t been said in a loud tone, but the shock of it settled like a weight across Jey’s shoulders.
Her response came without thought, escaping her lips in barely more than a whisper. “Better that than not trying at all.”
It was Treyam who answered this time. He had moved to stay near her. His tone was warm and gentle and full of sincerity. “If you come with us now, wait a while, form a plan – I’ll go back with you when the time is right. We’ll bring that place down together.”
Jey glanced at the man in surprise. The look of laughter had faded from his face. His expression was hard, full of determination.
The woman spoke again. “There may not be many of us left in this world, but all of us are done being slaves, done seeing our people tortured and killed. We’ll fight with you, if you give us a little time.”
Jey turned in a circle, rotating to look at the faces of the Tessilari. They varied in age, eye color, hair color, height, gender, and the color of their tessili. But one thing was consistent.
Every single one of them looked sincere.
“Lokim has told us of the place you came from.” The woman continued to speak, eyes never wavering as they looked at Jey. “It cannot be tolerated. We won’t allow it to exist. If you go alone, you throw your life away. If you go with us, you can see the academy fall.”
It was Phril who decided it for her. The tessila had woken when the swaying of Jey’s sleeve had stopped. He stirred now, feeling a little thrill at the word “fall.” Jey tried to remember if she’d ever felt him respond to an individual word that way.
She lifted her sleeve to look at her tessila. He blinked at her, his black eyes bright and clever as always. But there was something new behind them – some increased level of understanding.
Phril was changing. Since he’d been going through the stitchring with Bliz, he’d developed somehow, matured. If she went back now, back to the academy, she’d never know why.
Jey lowered her arm. She closed her eyes for one long moment. She remembered what Elle had said, the night Jey hadn’t wanted to go into the hillside. I trust him.
Jey opened her eyes. Treyam was looking at her. There was warmth in his face again.
He extended a hand.
Maybe she couldn’t trust the Tessilari. Maybe she couldn’t trust anyone. Not yet.
This man had thrown himself into a fight to help her, stood against foes he didn’t understand, then exhausted himself to heal her leg, all before even knowing who she was. Perhaps she could try to trust one man.
It was a place to start.
Jey reached out and set her hand in Treyam’s.
Wordlessly, the Tessilari around her began to move forward again, away from Tessili Academy, towards the Valley of Mist.
AVAILABLE NOW
Tessili Revenge
Chronicles of the Tessilari : Book III
Robin Stephen
◈
First Mage Otha sat in her private greenhouse, chair oriented so the unbroken sunlight poured through the windows onto her face. Although the day was young and the dry wind outside carried a sharp edge as it blew down from the frosted peaks, here among the brillbane the air was warm.
Still, Otha had a woolen blanket spread across her lap. It seemed she was never quite warm anymore. She supposed such were the consequences of living for over 400 years.
There was a rustling near the entryway, and a murmur of voices. First Mage Otha suppressed a sigh. She had agreed, again, to meet with High Mage Agina, even though they both knew their conversation would doubtless play out in a manner no different from all the times before.
Otha composed herself. She sat a little straighter in her chair, trying to draw optimism and strength from the gentle warmth of the sunbeam. Grip, sensing her anxiety, fluttered over from his favorite brillbane perch to settle on his preferred spot on the back of her right hand. He glanced up, his black eyes shrewd and a little worried.
The tessila’s scales were still as brilliant a purple as ever, but he, too, was showing signs of age. Several scales along his brow ridge had shed out only to grow in flat black instead of incandescent purple. These days, Grip never ventured far from Otha’s side. Being apart made both of them anxious.
More murmuring drifted in from the hall. Willis appeared, looking flustered as usual. “High Mage Agina will see you now, if you’re ready, my lady.”
Otha waved a thin hand and the young man withdrew. Otha closed her eyes. Grip settled down, shifting his stiff joints so his soft belly was snugged up against her worn skin.
There was the tap of shoes and the rustling of fabric as Agina entered and settled into the chair opposite Otha. For a moment, Otha considered keeping her eyes closed – letting them think she’d drifted off to sleep. They all thought her half senile anyway. She wasn’t, of course. She just found it increasingly difficult to care about the mundane conflicts they so often brought to her to resolve.
But she knew why Agina had come today. She also knew the other woman wouldn’t leave until they’d spoken. With tired reluctance, she opened her eyes.
The High Mage sat upright and rigid in her chair. Her tessila, Fara, sat on her knee, wings tucked back and chin held aloft. They’d both alwa
ys been a bit proud. But then, who was Otha to cast that particular stone?
“Hello, Agina,” Otha said. Although Otha’s skin was thin and her eyes watery, her voice was still strong. She was glad of that. It wouldn’t do for the First Mage to speak in wavering tones.
Agina didn’t waste time with pleasantries. She rarely did. “We have authorized a party to leave the valley. They will collect intelligence regarding the current state of affairs at Tessili Academy, and infiltrate the court. We need to know more about public sentiment in the current culture to make informed decisions.”
Otha said nothing. Grip settled a little lower on her hand, growing drowsy. Otha could remember a time he’d have bristled just at having another tessila in his territory. She supposed age had mellowed them both.
There was a long silence. Outside, a breeze was blowing the tops of the pine trees, making them wave and bend in fitful bobs. In the greenhouse, all was still.
Agina shifted, and continued. “It’s our hope there might be less fear in the populace now. So much time has passed since the Betrayal.”
Beyond the pine trees, the mountains reared. From her vantage, Otha could only see their snow-blanketed shoulders. The peaks, she knew, reached high into the bright sky – jagged tops raking at the heavens. At their base hung the mists, thick and heavy. Otha could feel them, the trickle of thought and energy that spell took from her. She’d been helping to hold the mists in place since the day they’d been summoned.
She understood the hope that drove the younger people to search for a way out. She couldn’t deny the Tessilari were slowly dying in this place. When they’d settled here, everyone had feared the population would outgrow this valley. Now, houses stood abandoned at the ends of streets. In the 384 years since the remnants of the Tessilari had found refuge in this place, the tessili they’d brought with them had thrived briefly, then begun to fail. And so the Tessilari failed as well.
Otha understood the hope, yes, but she didn’t share it. She closed her eyes again, feeling the vast loneliness that came with an unusually long life. She was the only living Tessilari who remembered – who had seen the people of Masidon go mad. She’d seen the men and women who’d fought beside her in the long, brutal War of the Diods turn the weapons the Tessilari had created for use against a common enemy back on those who had made them. So much of her long life had faded in her mind—the faces of her loved ones, the tenor of her own mother’s voice—but she remembered those terrible days when man had fought man, brother had betrayed brother, and, at last, the Tessilari had fled.