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The Grove(82)

By:Jean Johnson


(Possibly. I’ll fetch it out for you to study . . . in your copious free time,) his Guide added as Aradin dried his hands. (Try not to spend all night making love to her. Neither of you can afford to sleep in, in the morning.)

(You have great faith in my seductive abilities. I’m not planning on making it into her bed tonight. But I am hoping for at least a few more kisses,) Aradin said. Exiting the room, he went downstairs to rejoin Saleria at the back door. (Hand me the analyzer kit, will you?)

(Which wand would you like?) Teral asked him, using the holy light which all of their kind could summon in the Dark to read the little instruction booklet that had come with the case. (General-purpose sampler, or something more specific, like the power-flow tracer?)

(General-purpose sampler, I guess, until we get to the Bower. I’d like more samples of the plants and such on the path to the heart of the Grove, and particularly a sample of the thettis-bug vines. If I can figure out how the two plants and the insects are melded together, I might be able to figure out how to calm or even tame them. I won’t hold my breath over being able to separate them back into their original three species, though.)

(That would probably be futile, yes. Let’s see . . . you would want . . . the bronze and carnelian wand, I think. The kit says it’s useful for discerning properties of plants and animals,) the older Witch decided.

Teral handed the tablet and the selected wand to his Host, who extracted them from his Witchcloak sleeve, only to tuck the tablet into the pouch hung on his belt. The orange-tipped wand, barely the size of a grease pencil, Aradin kept in his hand. Saleria wasn’t yet at the back door, but she joined him within a few moments, carrying the satchel that held Daranen’s neatly penned list of prayer petitions for the day. Slipping the strap for it over her head, she unlocked the back door and escorted Aradin outside, then opened up the shed to hand him one of the pruning staves.

“Mind if I take a cutting from that vine made from thettis, morning glory, and some sort of bug?” he asked her. “I’d like to study it in more detail, and compare it with my notes on what I’ve scanned elsewhere in the Grove this morning.”

“Take what you need,” Saleria said, gesturing for him to take the lead. “Just don’t let it set down roots.”

She didn’t seem as cheerful as she had earlier. Aradin glanced back at her as he headed down the path that led to the Bower, noting the slight but discernible slump in her shoulders, the way her gaze aimed more often down than out and up. “Is something wrong?”

Saleria sighed, thinking of what Daranen had told her when she had fetched the day’s work. “There’s a special petition in among the rest. It’s from a young boy who lost his parents. He’s . . . not openly welcomed by his aunt and uncle-in-law. In fact, it sounds like they’re openly resentful of the extra mouth to feed. He wants me to pray to Kata and Jinga to bring his parents back. It could be the complaining of a child who is exaggerating things, but it could also be the truth. Either way . . .”

“A moral dilemma,” Aradin agreed. He returned most of his attention to the path, but being a fellow priest, he did know why she wasn’t happy. “Attempting to pray for such things is forbidden by the Laws of God and Man, if I remember my lessons right.”

“It is. A Healer can pray for divine aid when healing someone mortally wounded or freshly dead, attempting to revive them within moments of their demise, but those long departed?” She shook her head, then sighed roughly. “Nor can I pray for Kata and Jinga to change the minds of his next-family. We are given free will by the Gods, and it is the one gift They cannot, and will not, take back. My prayers are backed by magic. They can literally move . . . well, not mountains, but small hills have been known to shift. Little ones.” She gestured with a hand down by her knee, and flashed him a rueful smile, her sense of humor tainted by her regret over the petition in her satchel.

He smiled back, enjoying the joke, since it leavened the otherwise somber conversation. “So what can you do?”

Something rustled in the bushes. Both froze, gripping their staves and looking all around for an attack. After a moment, an ambulatory marigold waddled into view. One of the bushes fought back, its branches gripping at the plant. The marigold smacked it with its leaves, flailing back and forth. Bits of greenery ripped off and drifted down before the marigold managed to free itself and continue on its way.

Saleria relaxed a little, though she wondered where the others had gone. Usually, they moved as a pack. They moved slower in pockets of sunshine, often stopping to set down roots and replenish themselves with nourishment from the soil. As she watched, the marigold hit just such a patch of mossy, sunlit ground, stopped, and wiggled its roots into the soil with a little shake.