The Grove(112)
The ground around the odd-looking tree was crowded with the bodies of black-robed men and women moving back and forth. It wasn’t easy, walking with her arms wrapped around Teral’s chest, but they managed. She had been warned not to let go, for without a Witch’s holy powers to shelter her, the Dark could quickly become a very confusing and dangerous place. The last thing the Keeper of the Grove needed was to get physically lost between Life and the Afterlife.
“Priest coming through!” Teral called out, escorting her into the midst. The sea of faces—since the dark robes were hard to see in the gloom—parted before them, until they came to a tallish, black-haired man with astounding, vivid blue eyes. “Saleria, this is Guide Niel, who will take you through to Host Orana’s Doorway. Niel, this is Guardian Saleria,” the gray-bearded man told the clean-shaven one. “Make sure she gets anything she needs while she’s in Nightfall.”
“Within the constraints of time and duty, she will have priority in our attention,” Niel promised. He touched Saleria’s shoulder, gripping it for a moment before sliding his arm around her. “Shift your grasp to me, and be ready to be holding my Host. It will be safe to let go when you see the light of day.”
She nodded and wrapped her arms around his muscular chest, squeezing her eyes shut as the other Witches helped pull the folds of his cloak around the two of them. A shuffling step back and to the side, and the hard male chest morphed into a softer feminine one. A moment later, light bloomed around her, air rushed in to meet her . . . and nausea welled up inside of her.
With a nudge from the Witch, Saleria let go and staggered free, trying not to heave. Hands caught her, holding her more or less steady while she fought a battle between casting up the lack of food in her stomach and the desperate need for air. A brief retch escaped her, but nothing actually emerged, sparing everyone that embarrassment.
“Easy, you’re okay now,” a female voice soothed her. It took a few seconds for the urge to stop, and a few more beyond that for her to be able to focus her eyes. When she did so, she found herself in a stone corridor lined with an astonishing number of images carved into the solid granite walls. So solid, she couldn’t see any seams, so it was a set of walls that either had been magically grown or had been carved out of a mountain. Probably the latter, since magically it was far easier to part and rend stone than grow it seamlessly whole. At least it gave her something to focus her mind upon.
For a moment, all she could think of was the line from the Guardians of Destiny poem, Lost beneath the granite face, but then her gaze focused on the woman holding her by the shoulders. A little shorter than Saleria, the other woman looked to be about the same age, mid-twenties, clad in similarly cut, dark green trousers, but with a matching dark linen corset over her pale green tunic. Strawberry blonde hair and aquamarine eyes met her curious gaze.
“Feeling better?” the woman asked. Saleria nodded. “Good. Priestess Ora,” the woman stated, looking over Saleria’s shoulder, “a little warning about how they might react in coming through your Dark-place would have been in order. Thankfully, she didn’t actually puke anything up on me.” A squeeze of Saleria’s arm, and the redhead released her, facing her again. “Now then . . . I am incipient Queen Kelly of Nightfall, and you’re the second of a long line of priests who are about to descend upon us all, when we’re not the least bit ready for you . . . but we’re going to try to be. May I have your name, your nation, and the name or names of your Patronage?”
“Ahh . . . I am Guardian Saleria, Keeper of the Sacred Grove of Katan, and my Patrons are Kata and Jinga,” she said, mind reeling with the thought that she had dry-retched over the boots of this high-ranked woman. “Ah, no offense with my stomach, and . . . sorry.”
The incipient queen chuckled and patted her on the shoulder. “No offense taken—Ora, you might want to go back to the amphitheater hall and just wait while people start coming through, rather than having to pull them out of that cloak of yours in the middle of a corridor. I’ll send someone down to help you . . . Priestess Saleria, Rora already took the priest of Fortuna off to get him some rooms, so I guess you’re stuck with either following me around, or heading back into the amphitheater with Witch Ora, there, to wait until we can get some actual servants down here—we’ve had a bit of an emergency, making it imperative that we start the Convocation unexpectedly early, you see.”
She didn’t see, but Saleria nodded anyway. It wasn’t her place to worry over something she didn’t know anything about yet. But that did bring up the request she had promised to make. “Oh—I need to see Guardian Dominor. Do you know who he is, and where I can find him?”