Ella kept them at it, haranguing the fearsome desert warriors and Petryan labourers until they kept their heads down and did as she said. Soon, every dark space held a tank, and every tank was filled to the brim with incredibly salty water. Ella thanked the perplexed men who had helped her and dismissed them.
Ella then retired to her chambers and spent day after day enchanting rope. Her fingers became blistered from holding a scrill, and the gloves on her hands became so familiar she often forgot to take them off. Steadily the essence Prince Ilathor had given her was depleted, until she had used almost half of it, and she had filled an entire grain silo with rope. Ella connected the separate ropes into one long line, and finally she split one end of the line into multiple strands.
Lastly, she enchanted staves of polished wood, long and sharpened like spears at one end. On each stave she left the sharpened half untouched, but the other ends she covered in tiny runes, complex matrices she had created herself, unlike anything she had ever done before. One stave was much larger than the rest, a huge pole that took six men to lift. When Ella had finished the deft runemaking on its thick shaft, all of the essence Prince Ilathor had given her was gone.
She was ready.
A day later, Ella and Shani stood on the shore of Lake Halapusa, looking out at the tiered city perched precariously on its island, when the heat of summer finally broke.
A cold wind blew from the north, howling down from the mighty range of the Elmas separating Petrya from Altura and Halaran. Clouds gathered above, and the sky grew mottled with grey and black. Ella could smell the moisture in the air, and looking at her friend, noted the way the gusts tore at Shani's rust-coloured robe.
The two women stood fast as thunder rumbled from all directions at once. Sheets of lightning crackled across the storm clouds, and it was suddenly as dark as night.
The sky roared again, the heavens opened, and rain came down.
Moments before, Ella and Shani had been hot, sweltering in the Petryan summer; now the chill air from the north and the cool rainwater washed over them, soaking them to the skin.
In front of them, the raindrops fell into the lake with little plops and splashes, sending a sound like the shaking of a crystal tree tinkling in the air. The Petryans under siege in Tlaxor would have fresh water this day, for which Ella was thankful.
It was time to return to Torlac.
~
"WAIT? Please, Ella. I cannot wait further. You said you needed the weather to change. It has changed," Prince Ilathor said.
"We must wait for the rain to stop," Ella said.
"How long?"
"I can't say," Ella said. "When the rain stops, the city will be yours. That's the best I can give you."
The prince sighed, rubbing at his forehead. Controlling the men under his command was taking its toll.
"You'd better go," Jehral said.
Ella touched the prince's shoulder and turned, leaving the prince staring out the window at the Petryan capital below.
As she reached the bottom of the stairs, Ella cocked her head.
Silence.
She left the barracks completely — the guards well-used to her presence by now — and looked up at the sky.
The clouds had parted, and the weather was still cool.
The rain had stopped.
~
WITH Shani's help — Ella would never have understood the thermal equations without the elementalist — Ella built her great magic at a hundred points around Lake Halapusa.
Their loose clothing fluttering under a brisk breeze, a detachment of twelve horsemen kept a wary eye out for the enemy as Ella reached the first point. Shani was working in the opposite direction, and the two women would meet at the opposite side of the lake, a place they had chosen to be the section of lake closest to the trade town of Torlac.
Taking a deep breath, Ella halted her horse and dismounted at the place she and Shani had previously marked. She walked down to the lakeside until she stood beside the shallows, wary of touching even the smallest amount of the scalding water. Careful not to splash herself, Ella lifted her arms and plunged the first of her fifty sharpened staves into the water. A warrior tried to come forward to help as Ella then lifted a heavy hammer, but she waved him back. Ella smashed down on top of the stave until she was sure it was secure.
She spoke the activation sequence. "Simela-atun. Sunala-arun. Mulan-turapela."
The runes she had inscribed on the top half of the stave lit up with power, each shining bright and blue. Satisfied, Ella hefted her hammer and remounted her horse. Forty-nine to go.
When she was sinking the forty-fifth stave, Ella looked back along the shore the way she had come. Her breath caught. She could see a plume of grey steam rising into the air, tapering down to a point where the previous stave must be. Looking further still, along the shoreline, Ella could see more plumes, many of them.
It was working.
Deciding it was worth the risk, Ella crouched down beside the lake and dipped her finger into the water of Lake Halapusa.
"Lord of Fire, what are you doing?" one of the desert warriors called out, leaping down from his horse and running towards her. "Stop, you'll be burned!"