Richard Byers - The Reaver

Then the storm clouds to which Shinthala had been muttering answered as clouds had never answered any mortal spellcaster before. The sky-the world-blazed white with so many lightning bolts that it was impossible to see the individual strikes or, in fact, anything but brightness. The accompanying crash was so loud that it scarcely registered as noise. Rather, it smashed sensation and thought into chaos. Even though Umara had had some notion of what to expect, for a moment, she feared that she was dying.

She wasn’t, though, and when her head resumed working, and she blinked the dazzle out of her eyes, she saw the rain beating down harder than it had in all her time on or near the Sea of Fallen Stars. The pounding drowned out whatever singing and chanting was still going on, and gray veils of falling water obscured objects only a few paces away.

The Great Rain had caused Turmishan crops to fail and produced privation around the Inner Sea. Thus, it had at first astonished Umara to hear that the Chosen’s solution to the famine involved bringing down even more of it.

But Stedd was certain that, contrary to appearances, the rain was neither a force of pure destruction nor a weapon forged by Umberlee to impose her creed on the region. It was how one part of the world was mending the damage inflicted by the Spellplague.

And if the Great Rain was fundamentally a kind of healing, then master healers should be able to nudge it to work faster and finish restoring the natural order in Turmish. With luck, that truly would raise the Emerald Enclave’s magic to its former potency, and then the druids would be strong enough to undertake another great work.

That was the plan, anyway. Lying on her side in a lean- to with the torrential rain blinding and deafening her, Umara couldn’t judge how well it was working. “I’m going outside,” she shouted.

“What a bad idea,” Anton replied. But when she crawled out, he followed.

The rain pummeled her, stinging her nose, cheeks, and chin. She tugged her hood farther down and looked around.

Standing in the open, she could see and hear better, albeit only somewhat. The patterns of light on the ground had stopped expanding, presumably because they were complete. Reduced to a vague silhouette by the downpour, Shadowmoon still danced, and at least some of the other celebrants were still intoning their incantations; a trace of their voices whispered through the rattle of the rain.

Umara drew breath to yell, then thought better of it. She offered Anton her hand, and he smiled and took it. She led him toward the drop-off.

As they made their way, the sky repeatedly flashed white, and booms and crashes shook the tableland. Umara realized the clouds were producing some of the most prodigious thunderbolts she’d ever seen. But they didn’t make her flinch, not after the supreme violence of the initial blast. They simply felt like one detail of a still greater power at work on every side.

Unfortunately, even when she reached the spot where the ground fell away, she still couldn’t tell if that power was doing what the Chosen intended it to. Once again, the rain obscured too much. She could make out some of the nearer peaks composing the Elder Spires, but that was all.

“Seven black stars,” she growled in annoyance, and could barely even hear herself. But then the pounding of the rain abated, if not the roar. Surprised, she looked around and found one of the treants looming over her and Anton. The leafy branches that spread out above the creature’s face blocked some of the downpour.

She and Anton weren’t the only folk to whom the tree man was providing a sort of shelter. Several of the winged sprites perched in its lower branches.

“Thank you!” Umara bellowed.

The treant smiled, its mouth bending slowly. It extended a huge, bark-covered hand.

Umara hesitated, then took hold of a bark-covered fingertip. Anton gripped another.

The wizard wondered how long a polite treant handclasp was supposed to last. Then images surged into her mind.

Her immediate impulse was to defend against psychic intrusion, to snatch her hand back from the treant’s and sear the creature with a burst of fire while she was at it. It was the prudent way to react when anybody sought to touch one’s mind uninvited, and besides, the contact reminded her of Kymas riding in her head.

Yet another part of her-the part that had decided a measure of trust was possible even with outlander pirates, farm boy prophets, and druids-doubted the treant meant her harm. So, telling herself the contact was neither an attack nor an intentional violation, she focused on the visions and perceived them clearly.

When she did, she realized that either by virtue of its participation in the ritual or simply because of some inherent bond with the land, the treant could see farther than she could. In fact, it discerned what the rain was doing across the length and breadth of Turmish, and it wanted to share that knowledge.

The storm fed streaming floodwater that gnawed at the base of the peninsula that was home to the House of Silvanus and Sapra. Already eroded by months of rain, soil and even bedrock crumbled, falling away to form a gigantic ditch. Scattered steadings and hamlets slid and tumbled into the gulf. Umara hoped the folk who’d lived therein had abandoned them. If not, well, the druids had sent messengers to warn them.

Plainly, even after a year of torrential storms and even given the climactic fury of the current one, the collapse was occurring with impossible speed. But as the Chosen had realized, the Great Rain was in its essence a transcendent mystical force, not a mundane one, and apparently, it could do impossible things.

When the channel across the peninsula opened, the sea came rushing in to fill it. Smiling, Umara could only assume that even Umberlee was powerless to stop it, for the Queen of the Depths surely wouldn’t approve of the results.

Before the Spellplague, the Emerald Enclave had ruled a holy island called Ilighôn as its particular domain. With the straits reopened, Ilighôn was reborn.

The reshaping of land and sea brought a rush of spiritual power. Green light rippled and flickered in the sacred pool known as Springbrook Shallows. Treants laughed and danced with slow, swaying steps in the meeting place they called Archentree.

Then Umara’s benefactor looked farther afield. Once again, the sea was advancing, but this time, it wasn’t racing down a newly created channel. It was rolling over a long expanse of shore and drawing ever closer to a gray stone city.

“That’s Alaghôn!” Anton shouted. “The capital! Before the Spellplague made the waters recede, it was a great port. Now, it can be again.”

That’s assuming the water knows when to stop, Umara thought. But in truth, she expected that it would.

The treant shifted its clairvoyant gaze. Now Umara beheld patches of plagueland in the south. Pounding down, the rain extinguished Blue Fire as easily as it could have doused ordinary flame.

Then the visions faded, and the wizard found herself wholly in her own body and limited to her own perceptions once more. She was clutching the treant’s finger and Anton’s callused hand tightly, and the reaver was squeezing back. For some reason, she found herself reluctant to let go of him.

She did, though. The rain wasn’t falling nearly as hard as before, and the lightning and thunder had abated. She and Anton no longer had any reason to cling together like timid children.

All around her, the druids and their allies had an exuberant look; despite their exertions and the stinging drenching they’d just endured, they experienced the same exhilaration as the enormous dancers in Archentree.

Grinning, Ashenford struck chord after chord from his harp. Shinthala wore a kind of satisfied sneer, like the magic just concluded was an adversary she’d wrestled into submission. A centaur galloped, his hooves throwing up mud, and the sprites that had sheltered in the foliage of Umara’s treant friend flew into the air and whirled around and around one another.