1 The Outstretched Shadow.3 (99 page)

 Stubborn as an Elf… When you came right down to it, everyone, Elf and human, had the same life span. They lived until they died, that was all—and with Shadow Mountain moving against the Bright World again, the lives of Elven Knights would be measured in years, not centuries.

 A few days, a few hours, of happiness would have been something—a gift to him, a gift to herself, something they could have shared, a moment of sweet fulfillment with which to defy the monstrous Darkness that Jermayan was even now laying down his life to destroy.

 Her thoughts were bleak, anguished, and the passing of the days only increased her despair.

 Even if they succeeded, she would probably never see either of them again. The energy released when the spell was triggered would be… well, she did not know enough even to guess at the effects. Add to that the power of the unbound weather patterns, unleashed from their unnatural binding… lightning, hurricane, gale-force winds, and there, high in the mountains, in winter, snow. Heavy snow.

 How could two men and a unicorn, probably wounded, battered, definitely alone, ever hope to survive even a single night in a blizzard?

 Even success would not guarantee their safety, or their lives.

 And so Idalia took care to keep entirely to herself in the days that' followed Kellen's departure, lest her unhappiness contaminate the hope that was growing in Sentarshadeen with each passing day.

 IT was over a sennight since they'd been gone. Idalia had been restless all day, wandering far beyond the city, into the Flower Forest beyond the House of Leaf and Star. There were no flowers now. She could feel the sorrow of the trees and plants, their slow withering starvation and death, and her helplessness in the face of their need was like a fresh grief. The narrow canals the Elves had dug to bring water to the forest held only dampness, for the five springs were not inexhaustible, nor were there enough Elves in Sentarshadeen to man the pumps to fill the canals every day.

 Who shall live and who shall die? They have had to make so many choices already, and if my spell does not succeed, if Kellen and jermayan do not succeed, they will have to make more…

 Sick at heart, Idalia turned away from the slowly dying forest and crossed the unicorn meadow again. It was nearly lantern'lighting time, the bright, ever-cloudless sky dimming as the sun set. She should go home, and rest. Tomorrow morning she would come back here, to the spring called Songmairie and do as she did every morning. She would cast her Seeking Spell to see if the Barrier was down. Perhaps tomorrow she would scry as well, but she had been afraid to do that for fear of what her spell would show her. Like the Elves, Idalia wanted to hope until all hope of hope was gone.

 Suddenly there came a pulse of magic so strong it staggered her; a lightless flash perceptible only to her Wildmage senses, but it blinded and deafened her to all else for one incredulous moment.

 Kellen has triggered the keystone!

 Wild hope and sudden fierce joy filled her. He's gotten through!

 She stood, staring northward, fists clenched, willing him to hold out, to keep the link true until the spell was complete. She hadn't known she'd be able to sense it, but the keystone was part of her, formed of her magic and linked to her, and so she'd felt that first fierce uprush of energy as the keystone began to give up its spell. But now… nothing.

 Nothing but hope, and her faith in all she knew Kellen to be.

 Idalia turned and began to run.

 She was back in less than half an hour with her tools and a full bag of charged keystones. Heart hammering, hands shaking, she dipped each in the spring and began to lay them out in a circle around her. There was a bag of crystallized honey-disks in her tool-bag as well, used for sweetening tea, and as she worked she pulled one out and popped it into her mouth. She'd need the energy, now and for the rest of the night. If the spell had worked.

 Please, you Gods who shape the world. Let it be so!

 She paused for a moment, waiting. But the spell would run fast once it was triggered. If it had worked, she would be able to sense the results now. Or the failure.

 Once more—as she had done so many days ago—she dipped water from the Elven spring and scattered it around herself, touched water to her lips, raised her dripping hands to the sky, and called to the rain.

 Hesitation. Confusion. And then…

 Haste. Urgency. Frenzy. Need. Long-penned forces boiling across a barrier that had suddenly been cast down, roaring through the parched and empty halls of air with the force of a landslide, carrying a tidal wave's worth of water with them, shedding it indiscriminately and violently on the desert-dry land below…

 Kellen had won! The spell was cast. The Barrier was down. And all the pent-up rain that belonged to Sentarshadeen and the Elven lands was coming this way.

 Fast.

 She needed to slow it. Holding the clouds back would mean heavy snows for the mountains—that couldn't be helped. She must hold cloud-packs over lakes and rivers as much as possible, and let them gently into the Elven lands to provide the gentle soaking rain the forests needed, or else the rain would do as much damage as the drought had done. Keep storm systems from forming to minimize as much as possible the devastating winds and lightning storms that could still set tinder-dry woods ablaze even through the rain…

 She had time to think carefully. Even the fastest-moving storm system would normally take several days to reach here from the mountains. This storm was coming as if sucked through a vacuum—the abnormally dry air saw to that—but she had time—barely, but enough—to be sure she made the right decisions.

 This was not the sort of weather-working Idalia usually did, giving a gentle nudge to normal weather patterns. These weather patterns were abnormal to begin with, and she was trying to set them back into their normal ones. If she simply dissipated the force of the storm when it reached here, and broke up as much of it as she could as far away as she could reach, the pattern of the weather should quickly return back to normal, and Sentarshadeen wouldn't be drowned by flooding in the process.

 She took out another honey-disk and crunched it between her teeth with nervous need. There weren't enough keystones in the entire world to provide energy for the work she had in mind. And it wasn't much more than a sennight since she'd called upon the Elves to lend power to the forging of the keystone she'd sent off with Kellen. She couldn't call upon them to share in a spell-price twice in so short a time. Many of them were still recuperating from the last Working. She knew they would help her willingly—and if they did, this time there would be deaths. She would not have that on her conscience.

 It's all up to me, then.

 She ate another honey-disk, thinking about what she needed and what she would pay. She would not set a price—it was always safest, and if she refused the bargain, she would be free to try again. But she must think carefully about what was needed before she began.

 What was the most important thing? The Book of Stars said that all true magic came from the heart, and after she had thought about that for a long time, she had realized that one of the things it meant was that in every request a Wildmage made, there was one thing that was most important, the central element from which the rest of the request came. Focus on that, and see what else you could leave out. That was the most elegant way of working magic. Simplicity.

 The weather patterns needed to be returned to normal. That was the most important thing. But in this case, it wasn't the only thing, because the Elven lands had to be protected from the damage that the weather would do while it was settling back into its normal patterns. She couldn't ask for either one without asking for the other, not and be certain of getting both.

 So what was the best way to ask for both?

 To ask for the strength to do it yourself. She knew she had the skill. All she lacked was the power. The Wild Magic would grant her that—if she was willing to pay the price it asked.

 It would be a high price. She knew that already, even before the spell. The more specific you were, the higher the price.

 Would it be worth it? Mageprices could be bitterly hard.

 She looked around. How could she even ask? The flooding would drown everything in the canyon. It would destroy the city. And the forests and grasslands for hundreds of miles around were still tinder-dry. When lightning struck them, they'd burn. It wouldn't matter how hard it was raining. They'd burn.

 She'd promised to protect the people of Sentarshadeen from that. She'd sent Kellen to the Barrier to end the drought, knowing how dangerous it was, knowing that the journey would probably take his life, knowing that if he lived to reach the Barrier, the spell would almost certainly ask for his life—and that Kellen, being Kellen, would give it freely, even joyfully. What was one more sacrifice? With power came responsibility.

 With great power, greater responsibility.

 She opened her work-bag and took out a tiny brazier and a bag of herbs. She set the small cake of charcoal into the brazier's pan and called it alight with a snap of her fingers, then burned her herbs. As she did, she formed her intention clearly in her mind, and asked her boon of the Gods.

 To give me the strength to help the rains come gently and safely, and to return the weather to its rightful pattern, repairing the damage done to it by the Barrier. She did not specify the price she was willing to pay.

 When she heard the Mageprice that was her magic's cost, Idalia took a deep breath and lowered her head for a moment, closing her eyes tightly. For a moment she was tempted to refuse. Surely there was another way, a different spell she might cast!

 But now the choice was hers. After a moment, she raised her head.

 "I accept," she said in a hoarse whisper.

 She felt the heavy sense of listening depart—the sensation Idalia always associated with the making of the bargains associated with Wild-magery—and then there was only the sense of competence and ability, the deep ever-filling well of Wildmage power, hers for use.

 She got to work, putting the thought of the bargain aside.

 She reached out with her heightened senses, touching the storm.

 It was as if she were in Silver Eagle form once more, riding through the air on great, long-feathered wings. But now she was larger than any Silver Eagle ever hatched, her body so vast that she could sweep thunderheads aside with one beat of her great wings. She flew into the heart of the storm itself, shepherding the clouds where she wished them to go, spreading them across the landscape, slowing their eastward rush.

 Again and again she dove into the heart of the storm, feathered shepherd to her dark woolly sheep, but instead of bunching them, she kept them well separated, and instead of hurrying them, she slowed them— though, also like sheep, they resisted her efforts, trying always to return to their own ways despite her best efforts.

 Idalia lost all ttack of time. There was only the glory of flight, and the necessity of the task. The storm wind buffeted her, flinging her thousands of feet toward the sky in one instant and tumbling her toward the ground in the next moment as if she'd suddenly lost her wings. Each time she recovered and doggedly returned to her work, though her phantom muscles began to ache with exhaustion. It must be done. There was no one else to do it.

 And she had made her bargain.

 THE first fat drops of rain on her face woke her from her trance. It was day, but heavily overcast.

 Idalia opened her eyes slowly, blinking against the light. She was cold, and ravenously hungry. The first drops of rain were joined by more until it was raining steadily, and in moments Idalia was soaked to the skin. Rain! She'd never felt anything so wonderful.

 ALIVE… I she thought in confusion. But —

 Ashaniel was standing over her, in the middle of a half circle of Elven courtiers. All of them were gazing down at her with expressions of identical worry.

 Idalia stared up at the sky. Day. But it had been night when she began.

 "I must—" her voice came out in a hoarse croak. She coughed, and licked rain from her upper lip, and tried again. "I must have been here all night."

 "Idalia," Ashaniel said, very gently, "you have been sitting here for three days."

 HE smelled wet earth. The scent puzzled Kellen, drawing him slowly toward consciousness. How could earth be wet? It had been dry for as long as he could remember.

 Wondering drew him back into his body, and he became aware of the sensation of cool hands bathing his face with a damp cloth. His raw skin stung, but the motion of the soft cloth felt good, and he smelled the faint spicy scent of allheal tea. He opened his eyes.

 "He's awake!" Vestakia cried. "Jermayan! He's awake!"

 Kellen tried to sit up. The effort produced the sensation that someone had lashed his back with a bundle of hot wires. He could not feel his hands at all, and in a distant foggy part of his mind, he knew that was a good thing. He groaned faintly, and relaxed again, only then realizing that his head was in Vestakia's lap. He blinked. It was a great effort.

 He and Vestakia were in a cave. Not very far in—he could see the entrance from where he was. Outside, he could see that it was raining, a hard, steady, soaking rain.