Richard Byers - The Reaver

But Stedd made a little gasping sound that almost sounded like a sob.

Anton and Umara both pivoted to the boy. His golden hair dripping, Stedd winced and held up a trembling hand to signal that he was all right.

The adults hurried over to him anyway. “What’s wrong?” Anton asked.

Stedd shook his head. He looked unhealthy and spent, with discoloration like bruises under his bright blue eyes. “Nothing.”

“Tell me!”

“It’s just … There are three grown-up Chosen and all these other druids and creatures to draw down Silvanus’s power. There’s only me to draw Lathander’s. And this new … well of strength we just dug. It’s for them, not me. It doesn’t give me any extra power. But don’t worry. I can do what I need to.”

“I’m sure you can,” Anton said, “when you take up the work again tomorrow. The druids can stop for today and give you time to rest.”

“No, they can’t.” Stedd pointed to the glowing lines and symbols at his feet. “The designs and the … things the designs tie together … won’t last until tomorrow. Lathander says that when folk start a big, complicated work of magic, they need to push through to the end.”

“That’s true,” Umara said, “but perhaps the others can finish without you.”

Stedd sighed. “You know that isn’t true.”

Umara and Anton exchanged worried looks.

The boy scowled up at the pirate. “You told me to concentrate on finishing Lathander’s business.”

Anton scowled. “Would it sway you if I took it back? No, plainly not, stubborn brat that you are. Do what you have to, then. But be careful.”

“All right, everyone!” Shadowmoon called from her station to the west of everyone else. “Prepare yourselves. We have to press on.”

Umara squeezed Stedd’s shoulder. Then she and Anton moved back to stand with the treant.

The ritual resumed in the same incremental fashion in which it had begun. The Chosen at the cardinal points started conjuring in their various fashions. Stedd looked to the eastern horizon, prayed, and a golden glow lit his body from within. Shinthala murmured words that made the toes of her bare feet lengthen, burrow into the earth, and root her in place. Shadowmoon danced, and Ashenford harped. And gradually, over the course of the several breaths, the rest of the celebrants joined in.

Umara felt the intricate design on the ground pour out the power it had amassed. Or perhaps the luminous figure could more accurately be described as a lens focusing an ongoing torrent of spiritual energy rising from the Morninglord, the Treefather, and their worshipers. She suspected both descriptions were true in their way, and neither was sufficient.

However the magic functioned, she and her companions were about to find out if it was equal to the colossal task before it. The treant offered its hand, and she took hold of a fingertip as she had before.

The first vision showed her the forest called Mielikki’s Garden. The conjoined powers flowing outward from the Elder Spires rose through the trunks of the oaks. Branches sprouted acorns in a matter of moments, and hungry squirrels came bounding shortly thereafter.

Similar visions followed. Silvanus was the Forest Father, and whatever the celebrants had intended, the magic quickened the wild places first. Fortunately, plenty remained to revitalize plowed fields and orchards as well. Barley and beans sprouted and grew tall in fenced squares of mud and weed that peasants had abandoned in despair. Blossoms burst forth from apple and cherry trees, then fell in blizzards of petals as fruit supplanted them.

Umara sensed that Stedd had been correct: The other Chosen couldn’t have brought forth this bounty without him. The druids could summon the vitality and fertility Silvanus embodied. They could even direct it to farmlands that under normal circumstances were the province of Chauntea the Earthmother. But to flourish, the wheat and rye, the carrots and peas, the peaches and strawberries also needed an infusion of the sunlight the cloud cover had so long denied them.

Fingers closed around Umara’s wrist and pulled her hand away from the treant’s. “Look!” Anton said.

She did and caught her breath. Stedd was on fire!

No, she realized an instant later, he wasn’t. But the radiance shining from his body had brightened from a dawn-like glow to a blaze. Squinting, she could barely make out the human form inside the light or even stand to look at it directly.

“Is that the way it should be?” Anton asked.

For the most part, Umara still didn’t comprehend the inner workings of the ritual. But she feared she could guess the answer to the pirate’s question. “He may be channeling more power than he can handle.”

“Then this ends.” Anton started forward.

Umara caught him by the forearm. “You can’t,” she said.

“I touched the tree man’s hand again, too. I saw there are already new crops in the fields.”

“Still, if you interrupt the ritual, the change may not stick. And Stedd wouldn’t want that, no matter what.”

“To the Hells with what he’d want,” Anton answered. But he didn’t try to pull away.

The ritual seemed to stretch on endlessly. Umara supposed that was because her wonder and curiosity had given way to apprehension.

Finally, Shadowmoon shouted, “It’s done!”

The celebrants stopped chanting, singing, drawing shrill harmonies from beating transparent wings, or making any other sort of sound. The enormous glowing design on the ground vanished.

Stedd’s corona winked out at the same moment. Its departure left his body looking utterly emaciated, as though the magic had melted every ounce of fat and most of the muscle, too. He turned to Anton and Umara, tried to smile, and then pitched forward onto his face.

Evendur Highcastle sensed that elsewhere the rain had fallen with exceptional fury for part of the day and then subsided to what, in these times of perpetual rain, was normal. But on Pirate Isle, the storm had changed in certain respects but raged on even more violently than before.

Thunder boomed, and lightning repeatedly struck the highlands above Immurk’s Hold. Avalanches spilled down the mountainsides, and wildfires burned. Surveying the scene from the battlements atop Umberlee’s temple, his vestments flapping around his spongy flesh, Evendur speculated that it was the wind that kept the fires going in defiance of the rain. The same screaming gale burled huge waves at the island to maul and toss ships at anchor, crash against the rocks, and fling spray high into the air. It tore the thatched roofs off huts and taverns or knocked them down entirely and tumbled the wreckage away.

The wind was also a voice, though Evendur suspected he was the only one who understood it. It had called him forth to stand in the tempest and attend his deity.

Umberlee kept him waiting long enough to watch a galley pound itself and the dock to which it was moored to pieces, and the handsome old house called Teldar’s Rest slowly list until it toppled. Then, finally, she deigned to appear to him, although he felt her anger like a hammer blow before he actually recognized her countenance for what it was.

Her face was the sea. The entire sea, or at last as much of it as he could see from his perch. Two faraway lighter patches were her glaring eyes, while the breakers defined her snarling mouth. Somehow, her features maintained their fundamental constancy even though the water was in constant storm-tossed upheaval.

The instincts of a Chosen told Evendur the Queen of the Depths came to him in this guise because no lesser form could contain or express her wrath. An instant later, the sheer force of that anger shattered the walkway under his feet and much of the temple facade beneath it. He and countless shards of blue-green stone fell down the cliff face toward the waves below. He slammed into an outcropping, bounced off, and smashed down partly on and partly off a boulder protruding from the foaming surf.