“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!”