It was a supreme irony that this strange, two-in-one outlander was so willing to help her tend to the holiest place in the entire Empire of Katan where her own Order was not. . . . Bollocks to them! Saleria thought, frowning at the idea of being offered help but having to refuse it for . . . for whatever internal, priestly-political reason her superiors may have. “Alright. Witch Teral Aradin . . . or Aradin Teral, whatever . . . would you be so kind as to very carefully get up there and dispatch that poor rabbit-spider-thing, so that it doesn’t attack us or escape the Grove at some point?”
“As milady commands,” Teral murmured. Handing over the staff for a moment, he swept the hood up over his head, tucked his arms in his sleeves, and bowed politely under its dark embrace.
Bodies once again swapped, Aradin pushed the hood back. He frowned in thought a few moments, accepted the gardening staff from Saleria once more, and began murmuring spells in his deep voice. Magic rose from his body like a mist, weaving its way around his leaner frame until it flashed and faded into a rippling aura that could be seen more from the way it made the eye twitch than from any distinct visual effect.
A second murmur thickened several patches of air into misty, flat-topped clouds. They formed a stairwell and footpath just above the plants. As soon as the last one was laid, he swiftly mounted the makeshift steps and hurried toward the twitching animal. Impressed, Saleria wondered if he would be willing to teach it to her. Such a thing would make her own daily routine that much easier, if she could just walk over minor mutated plants which weren’t troublesome in order to get at the heavily mutated animals and plants that were.
Of course, it would be far better if I didn’t have to deal with mutated plants and animals at all . . . Recent conversations with Guardian Kerric, up north in Aiar, suggested there were other things she could be doing with the magic of her not-quite-Fountains, things to drain and use the excess energies. Ways to permanently do so, without the need for a living mage to constantly pray every day. Perhaps not automatic prayers; those need to be guided by a willing spirit. But . . . little things, perhaps creating and maintaining aqueducts of water for the dry northlands, though that might prove to be too far away for the magic to reach. Or some system of heating and cooling for the local houses, or . . .
She watched as Aradin studied the creature a long moment, then slashed in three strokes. It squealed and thrashed on the first, thrashed again on the second, and twitched on the third. Its movements slowed, then stopped. Aradin bowed his head, murmured something with a hand stretched out over the creature’s body, then turned and made his way back at a more leisurely pace. A few murmurs shed the cocoon of shimmering air from his body. Saleria caught a whiff of perfume-laced pollen, but only a whiff before the soft breeze wending its way through the Grove carried the soporific stuff away.
“Three parts animal,” he stated, dismissing the puff-clouds with a gesture once he reached the flagstone path. “Rabbit, jumping-spider, and mouse or shrew. Milady, as one mage to another, I say to you this place needs to be brought under control. In my oath, I swore I would not use the powers of this place to cause harm, but I am not the one you should be worried about. There is so much magic steeped into everything living within the garden’s walls . . .”
Breaking off, he shook his head, looking past her into the Bower, though with the kind of faraway gaze that said he wasn’t really seeing it.
“. . . Such negligence makes me wonder why your hierarchy would be so blind to the needs of this place. Unless, of course, absolutely none of your priesthood has ever studied the interactions of magic, animals, and plants,” he concluded, focusing on her again. “Otherwise, they are willfully allowing massive mutations to occur, and for no good reason that I can see.”
“I think there may be a prophecy involved, based on something Jonder, the previous Keeper, said about the mess I was inheriting from him,” Saleria murmured. She looked at the Bower and shrugged. “I suppose I could contact the Department of Prophecies to see if there is. Who knows? Maybe that prophecy you showed me—which I should check up on, to verify—has a corresponding one that is also going to come true about this place, and I can finally get more than myself working on this place.
“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.”