The Grove(45)

Her gaze shifted beyond the blackened ground to a delicate little ground-plant with doubled, conjoined blossoms that together looked like a heart shape, with a little extra bit dangling below. It was called bleeding heart, and while the normal plant filled the forest floors to the south with subtle perfumes, dark leaves, and shades of pink for blooms, the version that now existed here in the Grove had become something more.

“But there are useful plants here,” she stated. Stepping over the burnt bits, she muttered a skin-warding charm and plucked a trio of stems, each of a different hue. Carrying them back to him, she held one of them up, careful to not breathe too deeply. “This one, the peachy-yellow . . . here, inhale its scent.”

Wary, but willing to trust her, Aradin leaned close to the half-dozen flowers dangling from the stem, and inhaled. The first impression of his cautious whiff was the typical flowery scent. In the next moment, however, a grin curved his lips, and a ticklish sensation bubbled up from his lungs. It emerged as a spill of laughter, a slightly giddy sense of chuckling happiness. Except there was no reason for him to laugh like that. Blinking, Aradin stared at her. “What the . . . ?”

“This is what we call bleeding heart, for its shape,” she said, turning the stem so he could clearly see the heart-shaped bells with their little conjoined pendulum-petals curling from the middle of the two blossoms. “Two flowers grown conjoined so that they form a little heart with a droplet-like bit at the bottom. Elsewhere, they’re just flowers, pretty to look at, but little more. But here in the Grove, they have mutated. This peachy-yellow one causes feelings of laughter and merriment. This dark brown one . . . here, have a sniff,” she urged.

Again, he hesitated, but again he complied. Again, the flower-scent, and again, an emotion. This one drew his brows down. Aradin started to turn away, but stopped himself. Analyze the emotion, Host, he chided himself. These plants clearly change emotions. Don’t just be affected by it; think about it. Holding himself still, he concentrated on identifying the urge to, well, pout. “I feel . . . petulant. Or perhaps . . . disappointed?”

“Disappointment,” Saleria agreed. She dropped the brown one to the ground and held out the last one. “Try this pale blue one.”

This time, he didn’t hesitate, though he was wary of a plant that could make him feel things. Sniffing at it . . . he relaxed, sniffed again, and analyzed. “. . . Contentment?”

“Peace, but close enough. There’s a pale bluish-purple that gives true feelings of contentment, though not necessarily of peace—oh, avoid the orange-red ones, the color of a glowing coal in a dying fire,” Saleria warned him, following his gaze to the rainbow of blossom hues available. “Those evoke feelings of hatred with distinct overtones of violence.”

“Amazing,” the Witch murmured. He almost asked what use the flowers could possibly be . . . but then his thoughts spun them into several alchemical possibilities. Plants had always been quite useful for augmenting magic in various ways. This, however, was a leap forward. In the hands of someone good, and combined with the concentrated sap energies, the power of the potions involved would be quite staggering. In the hands of someone evil, devastating would be a very mild word for it. That made him frown. “I am in two minds about preserving such plants.”

“Oh?” Saleria asked, lifting her brows.

“The possibility to calm agitated souls would be a huge benefit, but . . . to force someone to laugh? These things could be all too easily abused, milady,” Aradin warned her. “By unscrupulous Alchemists, and enspelled perfume makers, and who knows who else.”

“True,” she acknowledged. “But the scents fade quickly once plucked. I don’t even know if they can be distilled and preserved or not. But then I’m just the Keeper, a one-woman tender of this magic-warped garden with no time on my hands to experiment.” She started to say more, then paused, frowned, and considered her own words. Looking up at him, Saleria asked, half to him, half to herself, “Or is that the reason why only one Keeper has ever been allowed to tend the Grove since the Shattering? To give us little to no time to experiment with such things?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted quietly. “But as you are the Keeper of the Grove, it is your choice to allow others to know about this particular plant’s existence, let alone to allow them to experiment upon it or not. Or upon any of the others.”

His words settled her thoughts. Squaring her shoulders, Saleria nodded. “True. Very true. And at the moment, I am inclined to let you experiment . . . carefully, and cautiously . . . with some of what the Grove can do. Or rather, what it has already done. There’s no point in thinking ahead to new possibilities when we have so much to learn about that is out there,” she added, gesturing at their overgrown, terraced surroundings. “The first task is to clean up two hundred years of warped magics. Then we can discuss experimentation.”