Almost immediately, Tavi could feel the craftings seething over and through the great gates, running like living things within the great constructs—fury-bound structures, as potent as gargoyles but locked into immobility, focused into stasis and into maintaining that stasis absolutely. Tavi had as much chance of commanding those furies to cease their function as he had of commanding water not to be wet.

Instead, he turned his thoughts down, beneath them. Far, far below the surface, beneath the immeasurable mass of the furycrafted walls and towers of Riva, he felt the flowing water that sank into the rocks beneath the city, that had seeped through them year after slow, steady year, and pooled into a vast reservoir far below. Originally intended as an emergency cistern for the lonely little outpost of Riva, it had sunk beneath year after year of added construction as the city grew, until it had been forgotten by everyone but Alera herself.

By now, the little cistern had become something far larger than its creators—probably Legion engineers, back in the days of the original Gaius Primus—had ever intended.

Tavi focused his will upon that long-forgotten water and called out to it.

At the same time, he reached out to the earth beneath his feet, to the soil and dust lying before the city’s walls. He felt through the soil, felt the grass growing beneath his horse’s hooves. He felt clover and other weeds and flowers, beginning to grow, not yet brought down by the groundskeepers of Riva. There was a plethora of different plants there, and he knew them all. As an apprentice shepherd who had grown up not far from Riva, he’d been made familiar with virtually every plant that grew in the region. He’d had to learn which the sheep could eat safely and which he should avoid: which plants might trigger problems in a member of the flock and which might be used to help support the animal’s recovery from illness or injury. He knew Rivan flora as only someone who had been raised there could.

He reached out to all of them and extended his thoughts to the plants, the seeds, numbering and sorting them in his thoughts. He focused his will and whispered, beneath his breath, “Grow.”

And beneath him, as if the earth were letting out a long breath, the grass began to grow, to surge with green life. Blades lengthened, and were suddenly outstripped by the quick-growing weeds and flowers. They opened in a mute riot, sudden color flushing along the surface of the earth, and within a few seconds more, grass and flowers alike burst into seed.

Joy and fierce pride assaulted him in a distracting surge, but Tavi let the emotions wash by him and focused upon his task.