The Grove (Guardians of Destiny)

by Jean Johnson

  “Aradin, Teral, Daranen, I will see you all in the morning. Good night. And a good night to you as well, Nannan—I can draw my bath on my own for at least one night,” she added, to prevent the older woman from having to choose between handling the supper dishes and preparing the tub. “I did it for many years before I came here. Have yourself an early evening’s rest.”

  Aradin rose politely when Saleria did, and bowed to her. “Then I shall see myself out, and see you in the morning.”

  (I can hear your sub-thoughts,) Teral mused quietly. He sent his Host a fleeting, wistful smile. (Alas, it is too early to offer to scrub her back. Perhaps later, though.)

  (One can only hope,) Aradin agreed, heading for the door. (Let’s see if the inn has a tub available for my own use.)

  * * *

  Saleria did not want to get up. Her bed was comfortable, her body still tired, and she’d been enjoying a very delightful, if slightly bizarre, dream involving Aradin, whipped honey butter, sugared rose petals, and a waterfall made out of something thick and brown that looked like the spicy sauce Nannan slathered on meat when she grilled it. Alas, right on schedule, Nannan bustled into her bedroom, whipped away the covers, and smacked her on the rump. Just as the Keeper had suspected her housekeeper would.

  “No mercy for you today, Keeper,” Nannan stated sternly, ignoring Saleria’s offended grunt. “I lay awake half the night, fearing I’d start dreaming about Netherdemons, and if I can’t get my sleep, then you cannot. Up you get!”

  Rolling over, Saleria stretched across the feather-stuffed mattress. Her nightshift had ridden up a bit, but at least the heat wasn’t so strong this morning that she longed to be under the enspelled comforter again. A soft groan escaped, and her eyelids started to drift shut against the morning light. Hungry as she was, she was also still tired.

  “Oh, no you don’t!”

  Saleria yelped as the older woman whapped her in the stomach with a pillow. “I’m up! I’m up!”

  Climbing out of the bed, she gave her housekeeper a dirty look, but accepted the lounging robe without complaint. Now that she was upright, with a little adrenaline in her blood from that whap, she could think. I’ll have an interesting day, I think, she decided, knuckling the sleep-sand from the corners of her eyes. Getting Aradin Teral settled, figuring out what we can do about the various plants, working it all in around my schedule of prayers and patrols . . .

  Curiosity prompted her to ask, “Nannan . . . did you have any nightmares? If so, I am sorry.”

  “No,” the older woman stated, her tone slightly sniffy. She shooed Saleria out of the bedchamber and toward the stairs. “But I wasted half the night worrying I would. Instead, I dreamed about getting into an argument with pickled turnips that looked like striped melons and talked like children. A very odd dream, but not all that frightening.”

  “I do love the way you pickle things,” Saleria told her. She didn’t mention her own dream. “Any chance there’re pickled eggs for breakfast?”

  Nannan snorted. “No, but Daranen went back to the inn with that man last night, and he certainly came home pickled. I’ll not be surprised if your scribe cannot abide the scratch of his pen on the page today.”

  “He was probably enjoying the first new male company we’ve had in a while,” Saleria pointed out. She felt a little envious; there used to be a time when, at the end of her daily duties as a deacon, even a prelate, she had been free to go off and have a drink at the end of the day. Just the one, and sipped slowly, but a drink with her friends. But that had been in a city halfway down the continent. Here, she didn’t have the time or the energy.

  Although I might, once we get going on sharing patrolling and energy-gathering duties. That would cut down on a lot of her work. Well, some of it. Aradin would no doubt want to stop and examine a lot of the plants during his patrols, and . . . she winced. That means I’ll still have a lot of work to do. I have to remember this is a long-term solution to the Grove’s many problems, and not a quick one.

  Gentle Kata, Fierce Jinga, she thought in a brief prayer as she settled at the table to await her breakfast, grant me the patience and the strength for the task of salvaging the mess that is the Grove, restoring it back into the glorious, safe, holy garden it rightfully should be.

  She didn’t hear any reply, but as the Keeper of the Grove, Saleria knew her prayers were at least heard.

  * * *

  Aradin Teral arrived at the front door just as she finished her breakfast. Nannan made him wait in the front hall while Saleria dressed for the day, still not entirely happy with his presence in her otherwise neatly ordered world. Saleria wished the older woman would be more polite, but that would take time, she knew. The two clergy shared a mutual moment of eye-rolling before setting out for the morning’s wall-clearing. Or as Aradin put it wryly, “I need to learn how to take over everything you do each day, for the time you’re at the Convocation.”

  His words reminded her of the bag she had packed. Into it she had tucked a money belt, two changes of formal priestly gowns, two changes of Keeper-style pants and short-robes, dried meat, cheeses, and stasis-preserved fruit and bread, a stout cloak in case the weather turned bad, and a preliminary list of concerns she wanted to address to Kata and Jinga. It was a list she kept amending in her spare moments.

  As the day progressed, she showed Aradin how she patrolled and cleared the paths, gathered energies from the locus trees, consulted with Daranen over the prayers to be said . . . and how she prayed in the heart of the Bower, kneeling on the mossy ground, glowing staff balanced in her hands. The rest of her tasks she felt he could handle, as any competent mage who could fight and cast would be able to manage that part. And he did manage, for most of it.

  But prayer? To a God and Goddess he did not worship? That was where she wasn’t sure he could do a proper job. How could a foreign priest with a foreign set of Patron Deities properly pray to, and connect with, the Katani God and Goddess?

  But he was respectful while she prayed on the second day, and did not set up his alchemical tables or try to figure out the Bower structure. Instead, Aradin shadowed her every movement while they were in the Grove, asking an occasional question but mostly observing, copying, and attempting to get everything just right. He did a good job of it, too; by the end of the third day, Saleria felt he could have made a great apprentice, if it weren’t for that ongoing worry about his ability to shape Katani prayers.

  The ongoing worry of the Netherdemon visions was another concern. Each evening, they retreated to her study and used the whitewashed walls to project and view the images Guardian Kerric had captured. No concrete starting-point could be seen, but they took notes on everything they saw, of the types of demons, of the heroes who fought against them . . . and of the heavily robed and hooded humans who interacted with them, seemingly directing them.

  It was a disturbing revelation, that people would actually consort with creatures from the Netherhells so willingly . . . and more disturbing that the demons would obey. But there wasn’t much more either could contribute to what they saw, so far. As it was, Saleria herself believed that her own contributions as a Guardian would be slim until she could get the Grove under far better control, rather than merely maintaining the status quo.

  On the morning of the fourth day, Aradin took off in one direction, Saleria the other, and they met at the far side of the Grove enclosure in half the time it took her to make her morning rounds. Taking the neglected back path to the Bower took away some of that spare time, but enough was left over that when they arrived—after rousting a nest of nasty root-snakes and a pathetic beehive-like thing which had tried to sting them with soft petals—Aradin started examining the natural wickerwork of the Bower dome.

  Saleria pointed out the waxy nodes and mentioned that they had glowed in different pastel hues. Kneeling across from her, Aradin knew within moments what they were supposed to be. He had seen similar ef
fects in his Hortimancy classes. They weren’t lanterns; the glow was merely a provident side effect of their intended effect: monitoring the flow and use of different kinds of magic.

  “You see, they don’t come on when dusk falls,” Aradin told her in hushed, enthused tones as they knelt at the base of one of the bark-covered roots forming a main arch. “They don’t, because they’re always on; they’re always active, always monitoring whatever powers are being used—that mirror floating over there, you said it came through the Fountainway? I’ll bet you that had you been free from the need to concentrate and cushion its arrival that you would have seen the copper-hued ones, and maybe one or two others, lighting up with its arrival.”

  “The copper ones? So, do the colors indicate what they do?” Saleria asked him, reaching up to gently touch a copper-hued nodule. It felt more like crystal than wax, though the translucent look of it was more like the latter than the former. “Are they like the pools?”

  “They should be connected, logically, but I’ll need a special Hortimancy tool to discern their full function.” He flashed her a smile. “That’s why I’ve been shadowing you the last few days. I couldn’t get to work even on the preliminaries without it, but it should be here by tomorrow. The previous days, I got a good look at the Grove overall and how it currently functions. Today, I have time to look around and set up my worktables. Tomorrow, I should be able to get to work on how it should function.”

  “Here, here?” Saleria asked, pointing at the ground between them. “Or . . . or somewhere that Teral can pick it up, like he picked up that chest, and those sugar cane seedlings?”

  Aradin dipped his head, acknowledging her point. “Technically, it’s in Darkhana, shipped from Fortuna. One of our fellow Witch-priests will pass it to me tonight at the New Brother festival, and we’ll bring it to Katan.”

  “New Brother festival?” she asked, once again feeling a bit ignorant of other lands.

  “Every new and full of Brother Moon, we Witches gather in the Dark to meet and mingle, to discuss concerns and share news. Those who are ambassadors or envoys often use this time to pass along trade goods—like the sugar cane seedlings I bought,” he told her. “They’re to go to a specific cluster of Witches who work in the royal botanical gardens.

  “It’s supposed to be in the evening, but since this corner of the world experiences dusk several hours later than Darkhana does, either Teral will have to start without me, or I’ll have to take the afternoon off,” he told her. “Late afternoon. Can you handle the third locus tree and the Grove wall without me?”

  His smile showed that he was teasing her. Saleria narrowed her eyes, but smiled back wryly. “Maybe,” she teased in return. “I was going to offer to let you stay here tonight. I mean, in the Keeper’s house.”

  The look of surprise on his face was expected, as was the pleasure, but the relief puzzled her. At least, until he said, “Thank you; that would relieve us of the worry that someone would break into our room at the inn and disturb our body while we’re gone. It’s a bit dangerous for both Host and Guide to be away from their shared body at the same time. Usually we ward the place we’re in, but that takes away some of the energy we need for sustaining our visits in the Dark.”

  “I suppose it would be, particularly if they were out to kill you,” Saleria murmured, not pleased by that thought. Not that she suspected anyone of wanting to kill the friendly, charming Witch kneeling at her side, but her imagination could easily supply such a scenario.

  “Oh, there is that, but it’s almost as bad if someone calls in a Healer, because they think we’re in a coma of some sort,” Aradin admitted. “Technically, the Hosts’ bodies are in a coma, but meddling with the bodies can harm the link tying our spirits to our flesh. Most mages shield themselves against harmful magics, not helpful ones, and to shield against both is exhausting.”

  “Maybe I shouldn’t offer you a room in the house,” Saleria muttered, thinking about her housekeeper. At his puzzled look, she explained. “Every morning, I hate to get up, and Nannan bustles into my room and whips off the covers, and if I don’t move quickly—which I usually don’t, because I hate mornings—she smacks me on the buttocks with a hand or a pillow or whatever. And she likes me. I don’t know what she’d do to you if she thought you had to get up at a specific time and found you lying in bed, unresponsive.”

  “Is she a mage?” Aradin asked.

  “No,” Saleria admitted. “Just a very good, if forward and, well, pushy, housekeeper. But then I do prefer to laze in bed each morning. I just cannot afford to do so, as the Keeper of the Grove.”

  “Then a simple ward on the door will do,” he said. “Those who come to kill mages tend to come with magical abilities to aid them in doing so. As do Healers. We’ll simply tell her that if I don’t respond to three knockings on the door, I’m to be left alone. But that’s only every two weeks or so, and I’m usually back by local dawn—earlier, since Darkhana experiences dawn before Katan does.

  “Besides, once you feel confident that I can handle the morning rounds, you can lounge in bed,” he said with a smile. At the questioning lift of her brows, he cocked one of his own at her. “You’ll have an apprentice—me—who can do the morning rounds for you.”

  That . . . He . . . Wow, he’s right . . . I can sleep in, Saleria thought with dawning wonder. It pinched into a frown in the next moment, accompanied by a rough sigh. “Except I’ll have to get it through Nannan’s head that you actually can do morning rounds for me. And that’s assuming you’re a morning person. I won’t make you do something you’d hate to do, otherwise. At the end of the day—or the start of it, rather—tending the Grove is still my responsibility.”

  Aradin chuckled. “Teral isn’t one, but I am. I love being outdoors at dawn. The crisp chill in the air, the scent of dew on the plants, the little trills of the birds waking up . . . and the colors of sunrise, streaking the clouds and the sky in shades of peach and gold and more? Glorious, all of it.”

  The way he looked at her, the warmth and enthusiasm in those intriguing hazel eyes, the smile curving those lips, even the wisp of blond hair that had escaped from its thong, all came together in a very compelling package. Saleria found herself swaying forward on instinct. She checked herself for a moment, then with a silent, fear-dismissing, Bollocks to that, she finished leaning forward and touched her mouth to his.

  (Well, that was unexpected,) Teral observed in the back of his mind.

  (Unexpected, but welcome,) Aradin returned, his sub-thoughts adding a mental hushing. Teral obediently fell silent. He didn’t step into the Dark, but he did give Aradin full control of the moment. And Aradin gave it to Saleria, meeting her touch for touch but letting her take the lead. It was she who parted her lips first, and her tongue that slid along his bottom lip. He matched her movements, enjoying every moment.

  It wasn’t quite enough, though. Tipping his head, he deepened the kiss. She sighed and leaned in closer. Somehow, somewhere in there, they turned in the midst of their embrace until the kiss finally ended with a soft, parting nibble. Sighing happily as he lay next to her, Aradin looked up at the curving limbs of the Bower. The moss was soft and springy under his head and back, and birds twittered in the distance. The hue of the sky was a plain, mid-morning blue . . . but it felt like dawn to him all over again.

  “Mmm,” he sighed. “I could enjoy waking up to that, too.”

  Resting on her hip, skin still tingling from where his fingers had caressed, where his lips had brushed, Saleria chuckled at his quip. Just as her humor started to die down, a stray thought crossed her mind, and she choked on another peal of laughter, head tipping back. She caught the curious, inquisitive quirk of his brows when she glanced down again. Blotting a tear from the corner of one eye, she shrugged diffidently. “It’s . . . hard to explain.”

  Glad they were within the Bower’s protections, Aradin tucked his hands behind his head and sh
rugged. “Try me.”

  “Oh . . .” Searching for a place to begin, she gestured vaguely. “The other morning—I think the day you arrived—I had a grumpy thought when Nannan came in to wake me up and get me moving. I was wishing that one day she’d come in and be silent instead of so vocally firm and cheerful.”

  “Oh?” he prompted her, wondering why their kiss would make her think of that.

  “Yes, well . . . I imagined, just now, her finding you in my bed, and was thinking that might actually shut her up for once, out of sheer indignation,” Saleria said. She blushed and ducked her head. “Not exactly the nicest thing to think about doing—shocking her indignant, I mean. Not the you-being-in-my-bed bit. I, um . . . Oh!” Her blush faded and her eyes snapped wide. “Teral! Oh, I completely forgot . . . !”

  (And here it gets awkward,) Teral muttered in the back of his mind.

  (Only if we let it,) Aradin said. He repeated the words out loud, more or less. “It’s only awkward if we let it be awkward. Yes, he was here, but he has nothing against it. You did enjoy it, yes?”

  “Well, yes,” Saleria said, since that was far too obvious to bother with a lie.

  “As did I,” the blond Witch asserted, before she could tack a but . . . onto her statement. “That’s all he cares about—and he only cares about it because he is my friend.” Shrugging to resettle his shoulders and spine, he said, “It’s my body and my life, and I quite enjoyed it. Nothing will change that part, if we don’t let it. Besides, you can request that he step into the Dark in the future, if that is what you truly want.”