She took a quicker route than Kellen had followed the night before, up past the House of Leaf and Star and into the orchard beyond. Even at this early hour, Elves were already hard at work carrying water to the fragile trees. She greeted several of them by name, but did not stop to do more than exchange the briefest of greetings. The sooner she had her answers, the sooner her real work could begin. And with their usual sensitivity to her, they understood that she had an urgent task, and did not delay her beyond the simplest of courtesies.
A few more minutes' walk brought her to her goal: one of the ever-flowing springs that supplied the water for all of Sentarshadeen, located in the meadow beyond the Queen's Orchard. Without rain, these were the only sources of water for the city. There were five of them, as she remembered: Alcemil, Caldulin, Elassar, Helanarya, Songmairie. This should be Songmairie. Helanarya and Elassar were under Sentarshadeen itself, their waters sent by wind-driven pumps, to course through the miles of pipes whose results had so delighted Kellen last night.
A wide path of smooth stone led up to Songmairie—laid down, Idalia guessed, when it had become necessary to bring water carts to the spring several times a day—and the verge of the spring itself was edged with a decorative pattern of stones and tiles. Grass—lush here, so close to the water source—grew up between them.
She looked out over the meadow, but there were no unicorns to be seen at this hour, though she knew that quite a large herd lived in Sentarshadeen, since Elves and unicorns often lived together. Centuries ago, during the Endarkened War, Elven Knights had ridden unicorns into battle against the Endarkened hordes and their allies. All memory of that war had carefully been edited out of texts in the City, and it was so long ago that Idalia doubted that any of the Elvenkind now alive remembered it personally. But the memories of the Elves were very long, and their recorded memories of Demonkind longer still, and it was never safe to forget the Shadow.
She knelt and drank from the spring. The water was icy and pure. But not enough—even if Sentarshadeen held ten times its population, and all of them labored day and night—to water enough acreage to save them from disaster. All it would take would be one good grass-fire, one lightning strike…
One out-of-control salamander, a high wind, or just another year of no rain. And no reason for it. It was raining in Merryvale, and that's east of here, toward the sea. Why shouldn't it rain here?
Still kneeling, she emptied her pockets of keystones. She dipped each in the spring—water called to water— and then arranged them around her in a rough circle.
She cupped her hands again, filling them with the spring, and scattered the water around her, moistening the keystones a second time. Earth-magic and the spells of Finding and Calling required the caster's blood and the fruits of the earth as tokens of intent, but weather magic was the magic of air and water, and did not use those symbols as a bridge between the power of the Wildmage and that of the Gods.
She touched her wet hands lightly to her lips, blowing over them gently, and let the power well up in her, concentrating on her need and her desire.
Rain.
Kneeling in the earth, feeling its thirst, Idalia smelled water, tasted water, willed water to be. It was time for rain—the harvest was in, the land was ready to rest, to sleep. Time for rain, to bring the autumn leaves down from the trees and ready the earth for winter and snow. She could feel it—in the air, just over the peaks, in the distance—and called it to her with the intensity of a woman calling for her lover. Come to me, Beloved, and give me rest.
Nothing.
After a long fruitless struggle, Idalia opened her eyes with a sigh. Not so much as a shift in the wind. The keystones were drained, and the sky was still an empty arid blue.
More than any other, weather magic required patience and care. A storm couldn't be whistled up for the asking—not out of a cloudless sky, at least, and certainly not without paying a greater price than Idalia cared to. To change the weather was more a matter of a series of gentle nudges over time, more like herding sheep than lighting a fire.
But if her spell was going to have any effect at all, she should have felt something. And she'd felt nothing at all. It wouldn't matter how much power she used, or how many folk she shared the price among, she knew: the result would be the same.
The wind would not shift. The rains would not come.
Idalia's shoulders slumped.
This is no natural drought.
She'd suspected as much, after hearing Kellen's story the night before—Ashaniel would not have been so disturbed by a natural change in the weather. The Elves had seen so many droughts in the course of a lifetime that a natural drought would simply be met with a sigh, a hope that the Gods of Leaf and Star would set things in balance soon, and some careful conservation until the drought was over. They were sensitive to the health of their land as humans (other than Wildmages) were not; they would have known if this drought was like the others that had come and gone in the past.
They had—as she had—felt the subtle wrongness. They had known that no natural dry spell would give rise to that feeling of imbalance.
