Both men consulted on a swift, subconscious level. Ideally, she would be a woman who could accept the presence of both Host and Guide as a constant in her life . . . but if they pressed that point now, she would resist automatically. The idea was too foreign, too strange; only time would allow her to observe, to think, and to come to a true, rather than a hasty, decision. Aradin sighed and sat up, drawing up his beige-clad knees. Resting his forearms on them, he tipped his head at the rest of their surroundings.
“As much as this debate could go on a bit longer—and should, at an appropriate time—you and I do have more work to do today. Such as figuring out where I can work within this dome so that it doesn’t disrupt your tasks as the Keeper, but doesn’t put me in an awkward spot.” He nodded at the nearest moss-covered lump. “Having seen several of your Katani chapels and cathedrals, I can only presume those eight large lumps are moss-covered altars. Yes?”
Saleria blinked, looked around, then nodded. “Yes . . . yes, they are. I don’t use them in my daily routine, and neither did Jonder. We just kneel in the center, face the direction that corresponds with the season—north for summer, west for autumn, and so forth—and pray. I guess that’s why they’ve been covered over by moss. I mean, I knew they were altars, but I never bothered to strip away the moss. I guess I was thinking that the moss was just one more part of the Grove as a whole.”
“Then there goes the idea of using some of them for my research needs. I don’t think Holy Kata or Holy Jinga would mind if we cleared off the moss,” he said dryly, “but it would probably be sacrilege to clutter their tops with beakers and retorts, and a mortar-and-pestle or three.”
Saleria felt her cheeks grow warm. “I feel a touch of shame for letting things get to this state. All of it, really. The . . . the complacency, the blind obedience to habit and routine.” She ducked her head. “I’m really not the best of Keepers.”
Reaching over, Aradin tucked his finger under her chin, lifting her face so that he could gaze into those blue gray eyes. “Teral and I both disagree on that. You may not have seen or done anything about these problems in the past, but you are doing something about them now, and you’re not letting the traditions, habits, and routines chain everything in place. If you were anything less than the best, you’d probably cling to tradition out of uncertainty or fear, but you’re willing to embrace a different way. Teral says life is about change, after all.”
“True,” she admitted, taking some comfort in his words. She looked at him, her mouth twisting in a lopsided smile. “I feel like that old tale of the priestess being awakened with a kiss. I was asleep in the blindness of my duties, and you’ve woken me up.”
“Then I shall continue to kiss you, to keep you awake,” Aradin promised. Leaning in close, he pressed his lips to her cheek, then pulled back. “But we really do have work to do.” Pushing to his feet, he offered her his hand, and when she stood at his side, squinted up toward the half-clouded sky. “There’s the sun, so . . . that way is north, in this hemisphere—I kept getting all turned around the first few times I tried traveling below the Sun’s Belt. I’m better at it these days, but there’s a part of my brain that says the sun should travel through the south part of the sky, not the north . . . But since it does, and that way is north . . . then this southwestern corner here looks like it has a flat spot free of sap-pools, and it lies mostly out of your way, yes?”
Eyeing the spot he pointed to, Saleria gauged it in her mind against her daily routine, and shook her head. “That would do for me, but the southeastern spot is a bit more roomy. You just have to avoid that cream-dripping vine there, and it forms a sort of L-shaped area, see?”
Following her arm and finger, Aradin studied the subtly terraced area, and nodded. “That should work, yes. I may have to put up a screen to remind myself not to back up into the range of the drips, but it should do nicely. Moss off the altars first?”
“That moss may be saturated with sap below the topmost layers. We should use protective spells,” she warned him.
He grinned in approval. “Now you’re thinking like a Hortimancer. Our clothes are warded, but we should use gloves, too. I’ll have Teral fetch out a couple pairs from my gardening supplies. Mine might be a little big for you, but better too big than too small.”
* * *
Removing the moss from the first few of the eight altars led to removing it from around their bases. That in turn revealed a series of flagstone-and-pebble paths. Some of the stones were broad and mostly flat, if a bit worn by countless footfalls from the past; many more were tiny, naturally colored, laid in intricate designs: circles and arcs and diamonds and lines, all packed tightly into a sandy base that was as sap-soaked as Aradin had predicted.