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The eyeless, noseless man turns his mutilated face toward us. “The scourge sorcerers drew on our power before with the wrong intentions. You’re trying to set things right. And the more of your own power you use, the harder it’ll be on your minds. Isn’t that right? If we lend you what we can of our gifts, you can make a small amount of your riven magic stretch farther.”
A sharp ache pierces through my heart. Because it doesn’t matter that I’m concealed when Poltus can’t see anyway, I don’t hold myself back from speaking. “We’d never ask to use you the way they did.”
The man makes a dismissive sound. “You’re not asking. We’re offering. There isn’t much we’re capable of contributing in our current state… Please, let us do what we can to see Silana restored to peace.”
I don’t know how to argue with that request.
Sulla bobs her head respectfully with a rustle of her dress. “We appreciate your support more than you can imagine. Thank you.”
Poltus sinks down on the grass next to the platform, tucked out of the way and I hope decently comfortable. His two companions limp to join him.
“I wish we could see the trials for ourselves,” the one woman murmurs to the others, and the ache in my chest expands through my ribs.
The scourge sorcerers have inflicted so much destruction and pain on the people they claimed to be raising up. I have to do everything in my power to ensure their reign ends today.
Tinom is calling forth the clerics he summoned from nine nearby temples. “A cleric of each godlen will set their own task to fit with the equipment we’ve assembled and to score by their own judgment with divine guidance,” he announces to the crowd. “The leader of Silana should have strengths in every area our deities consider important. The Order of the Wild has been granted the opportunity to provide their own clerics to assess the candidates if they disagree with the outcome.”
I grimace. No doubt we can expect plenty of disagreement.
The magic advisor spreads his hands as if in welcome. “The sequence of trials has been determined through random selection. We’re beginning with Prospira, our godlen of prosperity and growth.”
He taps the gesture of the divinities down his front, and it’s echoed throughout our audience.
A man in the yellow robes of Prospira climbs onto the platform, motioning a few devouts in plainer clothes with him. “We’ve brought our own trial with us to ensure none of the candidates could have prepared in advance. My devouts and I were inspired by the call.”
The devouts each unveil an identical miniature tree carved completely of wood. Fruits the size of my thumbpad poke from between joined leaves.
The cleric sets a statue before each of the candidates. “Please examine your tree. You will find that any part you wish may detach. Give it careful thought, considering the principles Prospira holds dear, and select what you feel is the most important aspect of the plant while preparing your explanation.”
He turns to Tinom. “Can you use your gift with illusions to amplify the image for the crowd as you have our voices?”
Tinom rubs his hands together. “An excellent suggestion.”
As the candidates bend down to examine their trees, each about waist height, the air shimmers in front of them. Tinom projects a single image of a tree, this one twice as tall as any person, with overlapping movements of ghostly hands as it accounts for all four of the people studying their own.
Well, it doesn’t seem as though Petra is likely to face any danger with this trial, although I don’t know how her answer will compare to the others. How much time has she spent thinking about trees?
I focus on the people beyond the platform, stretching my senses, staying on guard for the slightest hint of an attack. Next to me, Stavros scans the crowd as well, with a quiver in the air that tells me he’s concentrating on his gift.
All at once, an impression of a sharper tingling hits me from above. Some sort of spell is plummeting toward the platform—hurled up there to disguise its source?
My pulse lurches, and I snatch Rheave’s arm. “Magic above them!”
He doesn’t need me to say more than that. The daimon-man whips his arm upward, and a thin crackle of his supernatural energy ripples through the air.
His defensive effort splits into a dozen tiny bolts—and one sizzles as it catches the advancing spell before it can crash down on Petra.
I whirl around to peer at the crowd. My gaze flicks left and right before catching on a woman a few bodies back from the front of the crowd just lifting her hand with a determined expression.
Rheave can’t blast her from here. My heart skips another beat, but the words Sulla told me echo up from my memory.
Even very small acts can have a large impact.
My mind leaps to an appropriate counterbalance. I release a spurt of my magic to push down a patch of dirt beneath the platform—and thrust up an equivalent patch beneath the scourge sorcerer’s feet.
She stumbles, knocking shoulders with the man next to her, and whatever attack she was going to send out next falters.
Another stream of magic courses past me, but this one moves from the huddled sacrificial accomplices toward Sulla. With a swell of heightened power, she aims her own attention at the woman I targeted.
