The nymph nodded. 'Very well. We'll arrange it. You will need to take a boat to the Acheron and then go to Acheroussia, the lake of lamentation.'
'You tell me where and when, and I'll be there,' said Benito. 'I'll have to break out of here, and I'll have to take a bit of care about that. I've got responsibilities now.'
The nymph lifted a shoulder. 'Then why don't you wait? The Venetian fleet is coming tomorrow and with it your brother, the mage Marco. You can give Alessia into his care.'
'Very well. I'm going to go and read up on this Acheroussia and this Aidoneus. I never saw the sense in book-learning before. I'm beginning to understand its purpose. Your tree and your temples have a respite. But it is a temporary one. And I'm going to take steps to see that just killing me won't get your lot off the hook.' His expression left no doubt about the reality of that threat.
* * *
In shrines across the island, women enacted the rites of spring, danced the star dances, to the sound of the reed-pipes. And this year the embodiment of the great Goddess, She who is fertility and new life, responded with a vigor not seen for many a century.
Renate had the satisfaction of knowing that the new avatar was the strongest for many years. The women who had gone as willing brides weren't usually of the caliber of Maria.
She also knew that Maria had brought a dark cloud to rest over the old religion's centuries of invulnerability. From time immemorial the great Goddess's place had been something immovable in the face of changing times.
Now it met a force that would not be stopped.
* * *
'I told you I would help,' Maria said, stubbornly, but with no little pride.
He laughed; she was a little startled. She hadn't expected a laugh out of him. 'So you did,' he said. 'So—you, whose magic is of the earth and life—what is it that you think you can do in war?'
Maria paused, and thought, and remembered a certain legend she'd heard, sung by a troubadour at Kat's wedding-feast. The man had run out of love songs, and, in desperation, was trotting out some wildly inappropriate ballads.
This one was about Saint Joseph of Arimathea, and his staff, and a thorn-tree.
'I'll show you,' she said, taking a deep breath, and gathering in her power.
She began on land, for everywhere in Emeric's camp there was wood. Tent-poles, wagon-wheels, gun- carriages. Where the blessed rain fell on them, she reached with her power, woke up the wood, and reminded it that it had been alive once, and growing. She passed over the land with her power, and His, stretched out in a great shadow behind her. And where her shadow fell, whatever could grow, did. Whatever had once grown, grew again. On the plains of desolation, a carpet of flowers grew.
And trees. Many of them. Growing out of what had been Emeric's weapons of war. Which he would not be moving again any time soon, if at all—for out of life, comes death, and his mighty cannons were not faring well at all beneath her rains.
Now she turned her attention toward the siege on the water. True, water was not her province. But eventually, all ships come to land—or have earth aboard them, in the form of ballast. And where earth was, so was she . . .
Beside her, the Lord of Shadows laughed, and laughed, and laughed.
* * *
Emeric looked at the stream of muddy water creeping into his ornate gilded pavilion and swore. It had been raining now for five days. Sometimes it had slacked off to a drizzle. But mostly it had just poured. The homunculus Elizabeth had provided had plainly been destroyed. Emeric had to regard any magician who could do that with respect. The resultant rain was making the siege into a disaster. The Spianada was a quagmire. The accursed Venetians used the chaos ensuing when the Hungarian cannon were turned on Emeric's own men, and the burning of the camp by raiders, to retake the outer curtain wall.
They probably couldn't hold it . . . if the rain let up. But the rain was altering everything. The rain had flooded the mine; it had also flooded the gap between the moles, washing one away and making the other unstable. Emeric had insufficient tents for his men after the fire, and the mosquitoes had used the rain as a time to catch up on a winter's worth of breeding. The night-air hummed with them. Emeric could only hope the Venetians in the Citadel and the insurgents in the mountains were suffering just as much. But apparently the sea breezes gave the Citadel some relief, and the higher places were never as bad.
What was truly worrying were the reports of disease starting to break out in the crowded quarters. It appeared to be some sort of cyclic fever. What the locals called 'malaria.' It was apparently something they'd mostly lived through as children. Emeric's troops largely came from areas where it didn't occur. Without that childhood immunity, the soldiers who caught it often died.
A rider came galloping up through the rain. 'Sire, the Venetian and Imperial troops have landed in Sidari. We think at least twenty thousand men.'
Emeric closed his eyes. 'Call the admiral.'
'He is coming up the hill, Sire.'
* * *
Emeric and the admiral looked at the hulls of the galleys. They wouldn't be sailing anywhere in those vessels.
The dead wood had started to sprout. Sprout? That was too mild a word for what was happening. It was growing before his very eyes. Roots were creeping down toward the earth. Shoots were edging out of the twisting wood toward where the sun would be if it stopped raining.
'If they were touching the shore, this is what happened. Even if they weren't touching the shore, this is
