That made him choke on a laugh, and not because she was gesturing with the hand still holding the peach-hued spray of flowers. “You don’t ask for much, do you?” Aradin asked, clearing his throat. “I suspect you’re going to need to hire a few more mages if you want all of it done within your own lifetime. Oathbound mages, so that they cannot abscond with any plants or concoct anything without your permission. But still, if your own Order will not supply you with what is needed, then you do have the right to go looking outside the holy ranks.”
“True,” she agreed. “My scribe isn’t a priest, but his work is needed for the Grove. Same with my housekeeper, so I don’t have to exhaust myself cooking and cleaning, or living in a mess and eating at the nearest inn.” Lifting the pale blue blossom to her nose, she sniffed for a moment, enjoying the aura of calmness the flower imbued, then dropped both it and the other stem onto the ground. Turning her staff around, she touched them with the crystal end, absorbing a tiny bit of energy from each plant as it withered. “Let’s get to the southern locus and get the wall recharging over with. Sunset is drawing near.”
Nodding, Aradin started to follow her past the scorched spot when a tiny, crawling something at the corner of his eye caught his attention. It was enough to prompt his muscles; he slashed out and down, searing a last clover-leaf spider-thing. A long, careful look showed no others moving about. Hurrying forward, he caught up to the athletic Keeper after several long strides.
Once he was within comfortable chatting distance, he asked, “I get the impression you don’t like being in the Grove at night. Most plants require daylight. I wouldn’t think they’d be active at night.”
“Most are quiet, yes . . . but some still move around, and . . . well, so are animals. Active at night, I mean. Which probably explains why more of the Grove plants are active at night,” she added soberly, remembering the bug-eyes on that vine earlier in the day. “If they’re amalgamations of both plant and animal, the animal half would permit them extra mobility when the sun is not feeding them energy. It’s not the fact that some are still active that prompts me to move, however. It’s that I don’t have good night vision, and cannot always see the dangers before they’re upon me.”
“Ah. That makes sense. I have a few spells in one of my grimoires that might help with that, with ways to enhance one’s vision magically,” he offered. “But I can understand wanting to—”
Something bushy leaped out at them. It wrapped its branches around Saleria’s body from knees to shoulders and dragged her off the path. Startled, Aradin bolted after her, staff whirling. He slashed behind her back, cutting through a thick branch with a thump-and-sizzle of burning plant. The bush-thing shrieked and rustled, tightening its grip on the grimly chanting priestess. Her clothes started to glow with a golden light. A second aura sprung up, one with a fiery orange hue to it. Quickly putting up a personal shield of his own, Aradin flinched as the bush-thing burst into flames a second later.
Coughing a little on the smoke, Aradin looked around to make sure nothing else was going to attack while Saleria patiently, grimly waited for enough of the bush-beast to char and die so she could escape. She looked like she was holding her breath, and when she broke free, lurching back onto the path, she did gasp for air. None of her clothes were singed when she cancelled the shield-spell, though some of the bush-beast’s soot soiled her white outer jacket.
Saleria wrinkled her nose and dusted it off with her free hand. Or tried to; the dark speckles merely smeared. Giving up, she resumed heading up the path to the southern locus tree. “I love reading the prayer petitions and knowing I can do something about them. I don’t love the rest of this job.”
“I don’t blame you,” Aradin murmured.
They moved up the path, both keeping an eye out for more attacks or interruptions. The closer they got to a locus tree, the more its towering spray of branches shaded the overgrown garden around them. Moving up and down along the winding path, they approached the southernmost tree. The Bower was a broad structure, big enough to dwarf the Keeper’s home, but so was the base of each locus tree.
Aradin had seen and studied a wide array of plants in his travels, but even for him, it was difficult to discern exactly what kind of tree the locus had originally been. The closer he got to this one, his second chance to study one, the more he realized it wasn’t what kind of tree . . . but rather, what kinds. That’s a bit of birch, there . . . and pine . . . cedar . . . oak . . . is that maple? Some of these branches have needles, some have leaves—is that a spray of willow leaves?