The contest opened with rain, because rain was the Preceptors' whole claim, the miracle that had bought them a kingdom, and the was confident he could not lose at the one thing he had built his power on.
He mounted the altar, worked his ritual — the tokens, the burning talisman, the sword-signs — and up in the sky the machinery of weather began to engage, because here is the thing the book keeps insisting on: the Preceptor's magic was real. He had a genuine arrangement with the celestial bureau of rain. When he lit his talisman, the Duke of Thunder and the Mother of Lightning and the Dragon Kings of the four seas actually assembled, actually made ready, because for twenty years this had been a legitimate account with standing orders.
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