Such growth could not happen without plenty of water to nourish it, and as the sudden growth began to leach all the water from the ground, the water from the deep well began to arrive, rising through the layers of earth and stone. At an absentminded motion of his hand, a gentle stream of wind curled along the ground and sighed up over the gates and towers beside it.

Tavi opened his eyes long enough to see tiny seeds, some of them little larger than motes of dust, begin to drift up through the air, to where a thin film of water had begun to cling to the surface of the gates, the towers, courtesy of the cloud around them.

He closed his eyes again, focusing on those seeds. This would be much harder, without the gentle nourishment of the soil around them, but again he reached out to the life before him, and whispered, “Grow.”

Again, the earth around him sighed fresh green growth. Weeds and small trees began to rise above the grass—and the walls of the great city began to flush a steady shade of green. Bits of grass grew from cracks so tiny they could barely be seen. Moss and lichen spread over the surface as quickly as if they had been spread by raindrops in a steady shower.

He was breathing harder, but could not stop now. “Grow,” he whispered.

Trees as tall as a man arose around him, before the wall. The air grew heavier and heavier with a damp coolness. The flawless shine on his armor began to cloud over with fine, cold mist. Green subsumed the gates and the walls alike. Ivy wound up over the walls as rapidly as a snake could slither up a branch.

Tavi clung to his saddle with one hand, refusing to slump, his teeth clenched, and snarled, “Grow!”

From the gates and walls of Riva erupted a chorus of snaps, cracks, of the snarl of tearing stone. Green swallowed the walls, lapping up from the earth beneath in a tangled, living tide, a wave of growth. Small trees sprang from cracks in the walls, and from one upon the gates. More ivy wound everywhere, along with every other form of wild growth one could imagine.

Tavi nodded in satisfaction. Then he lifted his fist and snarled, to the water coming up from below, “Arise!”

There was the sound of an ocean wave crashing onto a rocky shore as the water leapt up and washed over the walls, over the green, sank into the minute cracks in the walls—and in that instant, Tavi reached out for fire, for the little warmth that remained in the frigid water from far below, and yanked it clear of the water.

There was a hiss, and a cloud of heavy mist and puffing vapor swallowed the gates and the walls. Ice crackled and screamed.