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.