“. . . What in the Netherhells have you done to my town?” she demanded, her voice cutting through the happy noises behind her. She started toward Shanno, then checked her stride, looked at the drumstick in her grip, sighed roughly, and tossed it to the side of the street. “Interrupting my dinner, ruining my town—what is this thing?”
Shanno didn’t answer. He was still a huddled ball of misery. Aradin moved up to join her, answering in the deacon’s stead. “I think it used to be a willow. And a redwood. And possibly a fox, or maybe a ferret. It doesn’t seem to have the fearfulness of a rabbit, at any rate.”
“I don’t care what it is. You, back to the Grove!” Saleria ordered, pushing some of her will behind her words. This close to the Grove, she was once again within reach of the rift to which she had been attuned.
Aradin and Teral backed her wordlessly, pushing their own energies behind her command. The treeman creaked, shifted, and started walking. Mindful of the fact it might just keep walking around the Grove if it didn’t have a purpose, Aradin ordered firmly, “Find a sunny spot inside the Grove, and plant yourself.”
“You heard what he said,” Saleria added, confirming his command. The tree relaxed its knotted branches, letting them brush the walls of the buildings it passed or trail on the ground with little scraping sounds interspersed between the thud, thud, thud of its makeshift feet. It turned a corner, some of its higher branches visible over the tops of the city’s roofs, and kept going toward the Grove.
As much as she wanted to yell at the blotchy-faced, huddled figure of the young deacon, to rail at him for allowing Groveham to be so badly harmed, with who knew what damage to buildings, and injuries to people . . . she refrained. Drawing a deep breath, she let it out slowly, then did it again in the meditation techniques for calmness which all novices were taught. In fact, she began the ritual prayer-chant for such things, moving closer to Shanno as she spoke.
“I call upon Kata, Goddess most serene, to calm my troubled mind and soothe my ire-filled soul,” she recited, her eyes on the disheveled younger priest. “I call upon Jinga, God of inner strength, to teach me to let go of my anger, rather than hold on and let it tear me asunder.”
Shanno’s face, tear-streaked and blotchy from crying, came into view as he slowly uncurled. Licking his lips, he moved them near-silently, echoing her words. Reciting the meditation ritual with her helped ease most of his trembling when she continued.
“I call upon Kata, most benevolent, ever-wise, to remind myself that most troubles are fleeting and thus not worth fretting over. I call upon Jinga . . . I call upon Jinga . . . ?” she prompted him, stopping just a length or so away.
“I . . . I c-call upon Jinga . . . to help me admit my weaknesses . . . to strengthen my character . . . I’m s-sorry! I’m so sorry!” he sniveled, wiping his dirty sleeve across his face. Some of the dark stains and red patches remained, for they were bruises, not soot or shame-stirred blood. “I didn’t know—I’m so sorry I did this to Groveham!”
“Well, now you do know what the Grove is capable of, Shanno,” Saleria said, studying the upset young man. She might not have been the best priestess in the world at that moment herself, either, for she couldn’t feel any real sympathy for him. Every single bad choice leading straight to this situation had been a free-willed choice made by him in spite of her many warnings. “Now, having seen it firsthand, do you think you have the power as a mage to command and control it?”
The deacon shook his head rapidly, his hair sliding across his shoulders. A twig with a few willow-style leaves had tangled in the light gold locks at some point, proving he had narrowly escaped several attacks. “N-No. I don’t . . . I won’t ever have that m-much power. I c-couldn’t even . . .”
He gestured lamely at the destruction, shifting to sit on the lightly charred, cracked, plaster-covered boards that had once been part of an upper story wall. Saleria folded her arms lightly across her chest. “And now that you know this . . . what do you plan to do about the results of your misjudgment?”
She nodded pointedly at the rubble under his backside, then lifted her chin at the hole in the building overhead, and tipped her head toward the rest of the town and the other signs of treeman-wrought wreckage.
Sniffing hard, Shanno looked around, then hung his head. “I . . . I’ll use my magic to . . . to help fix everything. Everything I can. But . . . there’s beasts and things and bushes, and a second one of . . . of those trees . . . please, help save the city! I’m so sorry, Holiness, I didn’t mean to cause any harm! I—I just thought . . .”