There were other creatures that used magic besides the shadow beasts who lived in the Ragged Mountains. Most of them had died fighting at Shadow's Fall. But some of them escaped.
This one hadn't been strong enough to remove the spell, but it had done a great deal to mitigate the effects. Likely whatever it was, it had felt her meddling and was watching from nearby.
"Mmm," she murmured, smiling in pleasure as she leaned forward and pressed her hands onto the field, sinking her hands into the soft ground where the magic held in the grains of dirt made her fingers tingle.
Seraph sent out a drift of Seeking magic again, this time looking for a creature not human. She found something almost immediately, but it was different than she expected: darkness but not shadow, somehow more natural, more elemental than the woods around her, something frightening. It could only be Jes.
The time had come whether Lehr was finished or not. She set the mystery of the farm's protector aside and began her show.
She stood up and held both arms out theatrically, calling out in the Old Tongue. They weren't words of power - she didn't need them for this. She didn't know many words of the Old Tongue, but she was willing to bet that Benroln knew even less.
Theatrics, her father would have scolded her, but her grandfather would have understood. Some people wouldn't believe in magic until it came with light and sounds.
The merchant himself had given her the idea for this, and the magic embedded in the soil gave her the power. She called light filaments to sparkle and grow like cobwebs on the wheat, dancing from stalk to stalk until the whole field glittered in light that shifted rapidly through the shades of the rainbow in waves. It was a pretty effect, she thought, though it was merely light.
But there wouldn't be a solsenti alive who would turn their heads from the field to look behind them when Seraph's children approached. Benroln and the merchant stepped out of the trees, but a flicker of magic held them where they were.
Now to leave the merchant in no doubt of what his gold had purchased for him. This was more difficult and she would never have even attempted it if it hadn't been for that dark, tingling soil that ached to aid the growth of the plants rooted in it.
Slowly she raised her arms together as she pushed her magic into plants. Grow, she urged them, grow and be strong.
Stalks thickened slowly and stretched up...
A defter hand than hers touched them and straightened and strengthened; balancing root, stalk, and bearding head in a way that Seraph would not have, though she knew, from the rightness of the path of magic, that this was how plants ought to grow.
Since her magic was not needed, she glanced toward the source of the magework and saw it, sitting near a fencepost. It wasn't much bigger than a cat, a small, mossy creature with rounded, droopy ears and large eyes that gleamed with power. Its coloring matched the earth and wood so closely that she doubted that she would have seen it if the field hadn't been thrumming with its power.
"Earthkit," she said softly to herself. "This farmer must keep to the old ways."
"When he had naught but old bread and milk for his own children he didn't forget me," agreed a voice she felt as much as heard. "Such acts are to be rewarded."
"Indeed," agreed Seraph. Since she wasn't doing anything else, she added a crackle to the lights so that the merchant and Benroln wouldn't hear her talking to the creature. "I would not have been able to heal this so well without you."
"Nor could I break that other spelling," said the earthkit in its rusty voice. "But I am done now." The magic ceased abruptly and it left in a scuttling run that her eyes could not quite follow.
The wheat swayed under Seraph's lights, ready to harvest now - at least two months early. She lowered her arms and allowed the glitter and noise to die away slowly.
"I won't do the work of petty criminals," she said clearly.
"Raven," spat Benroln. "Fine. See what happens to your children now. And as for this," he waved a hand at the field, "You may be Raven, but I am Cormorant."
Electricity began gathering in the air.
Stupid, stupid, arrogant Raven, Seraph thought, bitterly ashamed. A storm with the heavy wheat heads atop slender, drying stalks would