The Grove Page 9

  “I may not know much about foreign lands, but I do know prophecies tend to . . . to go off in clusters, like flocks of geese taking to flight.” She paused, debated whether or not to say her next thought, then shrugged mentally and said it anyway. “Which is rather apropos, since geese taking off tend to defecate on everything, and that’s often how a flock of prophecies going off tends to feel, from what I’ve heard.”

  Aradin smiled wryly at her simile, but otherwise said nothing to that. Particularly since he’d heard similar things, too. He didn’t know if there were any other prophecies dealing specifically with this place or not, just the ones dealing with his assigned task. Instead, the Witch gestured wordlessly at the upside-down basket of brown-barked, interwoven boles stretching a good sixty feet wide and roughly sixty feet high at its center.

  Nodding, Saleria led him into the moss-floored heart of the Grove. Beyond the woven woodworks and mossy ground was another odd sight. Leafless vines dangled down from overhead; each one dripped a thick, colorful liquid like sun-warmed honey, but in shades of blue and pink and green as well as amber. Each slow dribble collected in a small, moss-edged basin. Aradin eyed those little pools of pastel liquid warily.

  Thankfully, there were plenty of mossy paths between the vines, marked by dark and light, tough strains of moss, or at least something mosslike, thick and cushiony underfoot. He followed her down to a stone slab that served as her altar, wondering what the purpose was for the sap. It wasn’t until he squinted, invoking his ability to see the flow of magical energies, that he gasped and stumbled, overwhelmed by what he Saw.

  Saleria, hearing his sharp intake of breath, turned to see what was wrong. She barely managed to get him braced as he lost his footing on the mossy path. Steadying the foreign priest, she waited for him to recover his senses. He did so with a sharp little shake of his head and a rapid double-blink.

  “I . . . That stuff is . . . is pure concentrated magic.” He pointed at the saplike substance and gave her a wide-eyed look. “In liquid form!”

  “Yes,” she admitted, since anyone with the ability to see the flow of energies through the aether could have told that much. “I only gather the excess energies directly in my patrols. The locus trees themselves focus most of it into these collection basins.”

  “Collection . . .” His wits were still a little scattered, as were Teral’s. Both Host and Guide squinted again, focusing on trying to See where the energies went once gathered. “I don’t . . . Grove Keeper,” he finally asked formally, “where do these concentrated energies go, once they gather in the basins?”

  “They return to the land, of course,” Saleria stated matter-of-factly. It was quite obvious to her way of thinking; the earth beneath their feet was a great grounding source. It quelled and calmed lightning, and it shunted energies off of mages’ shields while dueling, so it made sense to her that the sap should drain into the land. That was how magic should be returned to the plants.

  Except he was gaping at her with a mixture of shock, disbelief, and even a touch of horror.

  “. . . What?” Saleria finally asked, wanting him to explain his reaction. “Magic should go back into the land, to feed the plants and make them grow. That is the cycle of magic, you know.”

  “Not this much magic!” Aradin protested. “That would be like . . . like stuffing a baby full of fatty, super-sweet foods, and then not realizing why your infant looks like a padding-stuffed footstool two breaths from a heart attack! I apologize for the crudeness of my analogy,” he added as she recoiled a little, “but plants should not be force-fed vast amounts of magic. From the thickness of the ground cover within the walls of this Grove, I would not be surprised to learn that that sap is being shared among all the various root systems. And because it is mixed into the groundwater, it is no doubt the cause of all these plants being mutated. Or at least, the main cause, augmented by eddies of overflowing magic from the . . . what was it you said? The locus trees?”

  She touched her hand to the base of her throat, horrified herself by the idea. All this time . . . ? “Surely . . . surely you exaggerate?”

  “I wish I could—here, let me fetch out a seedling,” he stated. Resting his borrowed staff against the edge of the altar, he reached into the sleeves of his robe. Teral silently passed him a stalk of sugar cane from its storage spot in the Dark. Pulling it out of his sleeve, the younger Witch showed his hostess the finger-long stalk of greenery and its little burlap-bound ball of earth-encased roots. “This is one of a hundred samples of sugarcane from your northern coast which I picked up for trade with my people. I haven’t been able to pass them to my fellow Witches in Darkhana just yet because it is summer here, which means winter back home, above the Sun’s Belt and the seasonal divide—they’re safer being stored in the stasis of the Dark for now, since nothing ages in its embrace.

  “But watch what happens if I imbue it with some of my magic. Pure magic,” he stated in clarification. Balancing the root-ball on his left hand, he held up his right and focused his will. With a whisper of breath, greenish light streamed out of his palm and his fingertips and soaked into the cane stalk. It stood there for several long moments, then trembled slightly . . . then quivered and flexed, growing in both length and size.

  The crackling, creaking sound it made as the elongated leaf-stalk grew from one finger-length to three and spilled out a couple extra leaves was clearly audible. Eerily familiar, in fact. Saleria paled, realizing that this was some of the same sort of rustling noises that had serenaded her all day and all night for each of the three years she had served as Keeper and Guardian of the Grove.

  He speaks the truth . . . Sweet Jinga, this is the truth! Swallowing, she looked at the mage-priest, who ended the demonstration with a dismissive flick of his fingers. The cane-plant continued to grow another finger-length even though the flow of energy had ended, turning it into a stalk as long as his forearm. But it did eventually stop.

  “See what I mean?” Aradin asked her. “But this magic differs from your ‘pure sap’ over there by one very important factor. The only thing I was focusing on was growing a large, healthy plant . . . but I was still focusing the magic.” His free hand pointed off to the side at the dripping vines. “That stuff is not being focused, other than that I believe it may have been separated from mixed kinds into purified types of magical energies. Copper for communication, silver for scrying, grass green for healing and growth, light purple for transport, pale blue for weather control, or who knows what the colors mean . . . but if all it’s doing is seeping back into the ground and isn’t being used properly . . . ?”

  “The . . . the result would be . . . madness,” Saleria murmured, the horror of it shocking her senses. She turned in a slow circle, looking out beyond the sheltering wickerwork of the Bower dome. At the madness beyond their enspelled shelter.

  “Exactly. Madness. A monstrous amalgamation of intents and purposes blended together by random chance, rather than by a guiding hand,” he stated flatly. Lifting the sugar cane stalk one last time in poignant reference, he carefully tucked it root-ball first up his sleeve, returning it to its place in the Dark. “In fact, I would think the very soil of the Grove is super-saturated with pure magic-sap, if it’s been dripping and dispersing through the ground for roughly two hundred years. No wonder this place is a mess!”

  His words made her feel ashamed for never having realized it. For never having questioned it . . . since his words did make a horrible sort of sense. Saleria rested her staff next to his and folded her arms defensively across her chest. “Well, pardon me for not being a fancy Hortimancer. I am a mage-priestess of Kata and Jinga, and my lessons revolved around imbuing prayers with magic, not the imbuing of magic into plants!”

  (Gently,) Teral cautioned his young Host. (She’s about to resist any idea you’d offer her, because your words sound like accusations of incompetence and idiocy.)

  Aradin knew his Guide was right. It wasn’t how he wanted her to feel, either. Quickly switching
to diplomacy, he held up his hands in a placating gesture. “I know that, and the fault isn’t yours, Saleria. It isn’t even likely to be that of your superiors; they, too, would be far more focused upon the spiritual needs of your people—too busy looking at prayers for the health of the forest, and not paying any attention to the needs of each individual bush and tree. Literally.

  “The fault, if there is one, lies with whoever created this system and then did not explain it properly to their successors. You have been left a horrible mess through no fault of your own, you and your immediate predecessors,” he told her, sympathy in his gaze, “and you have been forced to deal with it for the last two hundred years with no instructions or clues about what is really happening.

  “In fact, you are to be commended for managing it as well as you have, with all the knowledge of a priest plopped into a garden mangled by generations of ignorant management. But, ignorance can be enlightened with knowledge,” Aradin reminded her, raising a finger in caution as she drew in a breath to speak. “Whoever left your predecessors with no understanding of what should be done, that person was negligent, leaving their successors in ignorance. Ignorance can be turned into a chance for education and exploration, so there is a great deal of hope for both the safe managing and the eventual restoration of the Grove as a place where people can walk safely, without needing the disciplined will of a highly trained mage.”

  Somewhat mollified, Saleria still tipped her head in puzzlement, then lifted her brows. “Ah. Because their thoughts could inadvertently focus the magic, literally soaking the ground underfoot. In fact, those thoughts have probably been wafting over the walls and their wardings for all I know. Even those with the least affinity for magic can still cast a potent curse if they put every ounce of thought and will and emotion behind it, and this place is saturated, so even a casual unshielded thought could cause problems. I suspect the wardings on the walls of the Grove hold out such things from the townsfolk as well as strive to contain the mutations living within . . . but no wall or ward is perfect.”

  “Exactly. I came in here with my thoughts and my energies carefully shielded, as all trained mages do when traveling in unfamiliar or potentially dangerous territory. As you yourself naturally do, when walking its paths,” he pointed out. “But the average Katani? Chaos, the moment they step inside. Or perhaps off the flagstone paths, since I can feel a subtle warding spell upon them as well as on the outer wall. I suspect the lack of flagstones underfoot here in the Bower means that whatever prayers you send out from here are amplified by that more direct level of contact with the sap-soaked ground.”

  She nodded. “It has always been more effective if I send out the empowered prayers from here, though the moss has always felt mostly dry to me, and has never left undue stains. And the basins . . . the liquid in the basins does go down visibly after each round of prayers,” she murmured, glancing at the nearest pool, a slowly dripping vine of lavender-hued goo. Saleria looked back at Aradin. “But what can we do about the sap? I know how to channel the energy in the containment crystals into prayers, but the sap?”

  “My alchemical skills are a little rusty,” Aradin admitted, turning to look at the vines all around them, “but I would think such a liquid, purified and filtered into clean types of fluid magic, would make for absolutely astounding bases for potions. Those green ones . . . Wait, let’s experiment with another cane stalk. May I?”

  Bemused, but following his train of thought, Saleria nodded and gestured for him to proceed. Fetching another finger-length seedling from the depths of his sleeve, Aradin crossed to one of the green-dripping vines and carefully guided the stalk under one of the slow-forming droplets. With the clothbound root-ball in his fingers, he let just one drop splat onto the stalk. It oozed along the leaves as he tilted it first down, then up . . . whereupon the seedling grew with a similar creaking rapidity after a similar pause. Just one drop was enough to make the plant swell to the length of his full, out-stretched arm.

  “Unguided, unfocused . . . My aura-sight says it’s perfectly safe to eat, but I find myself leery to try,” Aradin stated quietly, showing her the stalk. “I don’t know what a travel-refined sap might do . . . Perhaps make it become ambulatory, able to uproot itself and walk about? Or an elemental fire; would that make it resistant to being burned, or make it spontaneously combust?”

  “I . . . I don’t know,” Saleria whispered, thoughts whirling with the implications. Abruptly, she turned and tipped her head back, surveying all of the vines. “So much sap . . . so many different kinds . . . All this time, we should have known. We would have known, if tradition could have allowed more than one Keeper to tend the Grove at a time!”

  “Your people could make a fortune selling liquefied magic,” Aradin murmured, distracting her from what looked like an impending tirade. He didn’t want her upset here in the heart of the magic; her shields were probably adequate, but he didn’t want her testing that theory. “In fact, I’d be willing to pay for the chance to experiment, to see if it could be used as the base for various potions.” At her sharp look, he shrugged. “I’ve been dealing more with the buying of herbs than the making of unguents in the last few years, but I did pass my alchemical classes with fairly high marks.”

  A frown creased her brow. “That doesn’t seem right. Selling the liquid doesn’t seem right,” Saleria clarified, catching sight of his puzzled look. She spread her hands. “This is the Sacred Grove. All holiness, and by extent, all prayers, and thus all magic emanating from this place, is to be put to use for the betterment of all of Katan. I could no more sell a bottle of sap than I could sell a prayer!”

  “I cannot fault that kind of reasoning, as one priest to another,” Aradin allowed. “But it is of limited supply, and if it can be bottled and used in brews, then your government—secular or religious—will want to seek some sort of recompense for its existence, and to regulate who receives some, and who does not . . . and most likely they will wish to see a profit from its sale, rather than have it be handed away for free. After all, they have to feed and clothe and house you, do they not? And feed and clothe and house your scribe? Such things cost money.”

  “Yes, and Nannan, my housekeeper, and all the paper and ink that Daranen has had to buy,” Saleria murmured, following his line of thought. She winced at that, and at the thought of her own which followed it. “Bollocks to bureaucracy! If I told any of the higher-ups about how this sap might be useful in potions, they will try to regulate it. Stranglehold it, in fact. But it should be preserved for holy uses!”

  (Convocation?) Teral suggested, along with an undercurrent of thought that whispered in several layers through the back of Aradin’s mind.

  “Ah—Teral just offered a possible solution to the dilemma,” he stated, holding up his hand to forestall more swearing from her. Not that either he or his Guide could be offended by her brief invective; the members of the priesthood on the Isle of Storms were much more vulgar when they wanted to be, and Teral still remembered that trip all too clearly from his own lifetime. Aradin focused on the needs of the present, explaining what his Guide was thinking. “One of the rights of the advocate at the Convocation of Gods and Man is to make petitions to their Patron Deity or Deities.”

  “And that means . . . ?” Saleria asked.

  “For the time being, you and I could work to contain the overflowing magic. I could do a little experimentation with potions-crafting, and working on undoing the warped amalgamations of plants and animals in the Grove. Once we know what the possibilities are, you could present our findings to Blessed Kata and Jinga. At that point, you could ask Them if it would be permissible to use the liquid magics in potions, and whether or not it should be sold, or regulated, or handed away for free,” Aradin said. “You could even ask Them to fix the Grove so that it no longer spews wild magics into the world, and thus return it to a natural sort of garden, however holy.”

  “That would be a very wise and balanced solution to the problem,” Saleria agr
eed, thinking over the possibilities. “Not even the Arch Priest would go against the word of Kata and Jinga Themselves, and the King certainly wouldn’t dare. Our God and Goddess have been known to manifest in person and depose an unworthy mage-king or –queen where needed. They have done so at least a full dozen times over the course of our long history . . . I think.”

  A sly smile curved the corner of his mouth. Daringly, Aradin teased her lightly, “Let me guess, history lessons were lumped into the same category as outkingdom lands when you were learning how to be a priestess?”

  She lifted her chin a little as she replied, but wasn’t too offended. “I’ve always been far more concerned about the current needs of my fellow citizens of Katan, and not what our ancestors needed. There’s nothing I can do about the needs of the past.”

  “A good point,” he conceded, dipping his head in a slight bow. “Now, since it is always wise to have clear thoughts and clear options when going before the Gods . . . may I have your permission to set up an herbalist’s table here in the Bower and conduct a few experiments?”

  “What, right here?” she asked, looking around at the moss tiers of ground and half-tangled wickerwork dome surrounding them.

  “It would be best done right here, because you yourself already ensure that no one else reaches this spot without your permission and your escort,” Aradin reminded her. “That makes it the safest place to avoid our experiments being detected by bureaucratic minds. It also ensures that I work under your supervision, and only with your permission, and that no one else can meddle with or imbibe my experiments unwittingly.”

  “I don’t know about supervision, exactly,” Saleria murmured, eyeing him. “Usually when I’m here, I’m concentrating on focusing gathered magics into prayer-spells. Or conversing with my fellow Guardians from other points around the world.”