“Yes. A puddle of magic, hidden so deep even the Small Folk can’t feel it…This rain will feed it…and it will rise again. A small piece of woods will suddenly have enough magic for the Small Folk to live in it. And once they return and take root, no man will be able to set foot there and hope to come out again. This rain will make a few women forget their proper place in the world, and they will remember things they hadn’t known they’d forgotten…and men will no longer rule the land. How can men rule when a female can flood the fields, or hold back the rain so that crops wither and die, or command the land itself to remain barren? How can a man’s toil fight against that?”

“Then we have to stay here and fight,” Ubel said. “We have to stay and protect our own country.”

“How do we protect it from rain, Ubel? How do we protect Wolfram when every storm that crosses the Una River from Sylvalan is filthy with magic?”

“We have to do something,” Ubel insisted.

“We will. And we are.” Adolfo walked over to the table and looked at the papers filled with Ubel’s neat handwriting, scattered over a map of Sylvalan. “The only way to keep Wolfram clean is to wade through the muck of Sylvalan until it, too, is clean.”

“Within the next phase of the moon, we’ll have most of our—“We can’t wait.” Adolfo took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. Don’t remind him of his failures. He needs to believe nothing can stand against him. Afterward…Afterward I will have to consider carefully whether or not Ubel has been too mired in Sylvalan’s filth to be trusted. “We must strike now. We must strike fiercely…and without mercy. Any Sylvalan baron who does not support us in our fight against the Evil One and its servants must be destroyed. We must bring the battle into Sylvalan before those creatures, those witches, can do more harm to Wolfram.”

“What do you want me to do, Master Adolfo?”

Ubel still looked pale, but there was a fire in his eyes now. He wouldn’t run away from the fight this time, not when his homeland was at risk of being contaminated by the magic spawned by their enemies.