The Grove

by Johnson, Jean

  It curled up several willow branches at the end of one of its upper limbs into a knotted tangle of a fist, and lifted it high, preparing to smash down on that rubbery bubble.

  Aradin firmed his will and reached for the resonances of the rift he had attuned to, pushing magic and mind into a single command. “Stop!”

  The tree swung its canopy-head his way. It contemplated him for a few moments, then turned back to its target. Aradin bit back a curse—and felt Teral reaching his Doorway.

  (Get under the cloak! I have her with me!) his Guide ordered. The treeman lifted its limb high once more.

  (Give me your power first!) Aradin snapped back, and pulled on Teral’s own magics, on his attunement. “Stop!”

  The tree stopped. Its lesser twigs and leaves swayed, making Shanno shudder, but the thickest sections of the treeman ceased moving. Gasps escaped the watching townsfolk behind him, and a few cheers broke out. Aradin didn’t pause; he knew Saleria was utterly untrained to keep herself alive and breathing while in the Dark, a trick only the strongest Darkhanan Witches could manage for long with their physical, real-world bodies. Spirit form was one thing, but flesh was entirely another.

  Flicking up the hood of his Witchcloak, Aradin hunkered down, wishing it was the bigger, all-black cloak back at the Keeper’s house. He did the best he could, however, whispering one of the spells all Darkhanan Witches had to master. “Sonoxo mortori.”

  Darkness spilled out of his cloak, shoving aside the daylight. With his back to the happy townsfolk of Groveham, Aradin stepped back once, twice . . . and caught Saleria as she stumbled free, gasping for breath. A mutter dismissed the darkness, leaving her swaying in his grip, clad in the better of her two priest-gowns. She still had a half-eaten chicken-leg in her hand, and blinked owlishly at the streets, the frozen tree-thing looming over the sobbing deacon, and the gaping, crushed hole in the building behind the huddled blond youth.

  “. . . What in the Netherhells have you done to my town?” she demanded, her voice cutting through the happy noises behind her. She started toward Shanno, then checked her stride, looked at the drumstick in her grip, sighed roughly, and tossed it to the side of the street. “Interrupting my dinner, ruining my town—what is this thing?”

  Shanno didn’t answer. He was still a huddled ball of misery. Aradin moved up to join her, answering in the deacon’s stead. “I think it used to be a willow. And a redwood. And possibly a fox, or maybe a ferret. It doesn’t seem to have the fearfulness of a rabbit, at any rate.”

  “I don’t care what it is. You, back to the Grove!” Saleria ordered, pushing some of her will behind her words. This close to the Grove, she was once again within reach of the rift to which she had been attuned.

  Aradin and Teral backed her wordlessly, pushing their own energies behind her command. The treeman creaked, shifted, and started walking. Mindful of the fact it might just keep walking around the Grove if it didn’t have a purpose, Aradin ordered firmly, “Find a sunny spot inside the Grove, and plant yourself.”

  “You heard what he said,” Saleria added, confirming his command. The tree relaxed its knotted branches, letting them brush the walls of the buildings it passed or trail on the ground with little scraping sounds interspersed between the thud, thud, thud of its makeshift feet. It turned a corner, some of its higher branches visible over the tops of the city’s roofs, and kept going toward the Grove.

  As much as she wanted to yell at the blotchy-faced, huddled figure of the young deacon, to rail at him for allowing Groveham to be so badly harmed, with who knew what damage to buildings, and injuries to people . . . she refrained. Drawing a deep breath, she let it out slowly, then did it again in the meditation techniques for calmness which all novices were taught. In fact, she began the ritual prayer-chant for such things, moving closer to Shanno as she spoke.

  “I call upon Kata, Goddess most serene, to calm my troubled mind and soothe my ire-filled soul,” she recited, her eyes on the disheveled younger priest. “I call upon Jinga, God of inner strength, to teach me to let go of my anger, rather than hold on and let it tear me asunder.”

  Shanno’s face, tear-streaked and blotchy from crying, came into view as he slowly uncurled. Licking his lips, he moved them near-silently, echoing her words. Reciting the meditation ritual with her helped ease most of his trembling when she continued.

  “I call upon Kata, most benevolent, ever-wise, to remind myself that most troubles are fleeting and thus not worth fretting over. I call upon Jinga . . . I call upon Jinga . . . ?” she prompted him, stopping just a length or so away.

  “I . . . I c-call upon Jinga . . . to help me admit my weaknesses . . . to strengthen my character . . . I’m s-sorry! I’m so sorry!” he sniveled, wiping his dirty sleeve across his face. Some of the dark stains and red patches remained, for they were bruises, not soot or shame-stirred blood. “I didn’t know—I’m so sorry I did this to Groveham!”

  “Well, now you do know what the Grove is capable of, Shanno,” Saleria said, studying the upset young man. She might not have been the best priestess in the world at that moment herself, either, for she couldn’t feel any real sympathy for him. Every single bad choice leading straight to this situation had been a free-willed choice made by him in spite of her many warnings. “Now, having seen it firsthand, do you think you have the power as a mage to command and control it?”

  The deacon shook his head rapidly, his hair sliding across his shoulders. A twig with a few willow-style leaves had tangled in the light gold locks at some point, proving he had narrowly escaped several attacks. “N-No. I don’t . . . I won’t ever have that m-much power. I c-couldn’t even . . .”

  He gestured lamely at the destruction, shifting to sit on the lightly charred, cracked, plaster-covered boards that had once been part of an upper story wall. Saleria folded her arms lightly across her chest. “And now that you know this . . . what do you plan to do about the results of your misjudgment?”

  She nodded pointedly at the rubble under his backside, then lifted her chin at the hole in the building overhead, and tipped her head toward the rest of the town and the other signs of treeman-wrought wreckage.

  Sniffing hard, Shanno looked around, then hung his head. “I . . . I’ll use my magic to . . . to help fix everything. Everything I can. But . . . there’s beasts and things and bushes, and a second one of . . . of those trees . . . please, help save the city! I’m so sorry, Holiness, I didn’t mean to cause any harm! I—I just thought . . .”

  “Next time, when someone tells you what your limitations are, give careful consideration to whether or not there are actual limits to what you can do, Shanno,” Saleria told him. “Because every single mortal in the whole of this world has areas where we are weak. I myself am incredibly ignorant of foreign lands and foreign ways, but I am not ashamed to admit it. And I will never cook as well as my housekeeper, Nannan. But it does not pain me to admit that, either.

  “My strength as the Keeper of the Grove may seem enviable, and something worth grasping . . . but you have not seen the thorns lurking on the branches you would grab. Well, now you have,” she allowed, then firmed her tone. “And now you will get up and shield all these people, Deacon, with what magic you do have. Go inside, stay inside,” she ordered, “and wait for Aradin, Teral, and me to corral and contain all the creatures your weaknesses have let loose.”

  Nodding, he pushed wearily to his feet, staggered a little on some of the crumbled bits of wall, then limped toward the guard hall.

  Saleria watched him go, then moved closer to the very welcome face of her assistant and lover. Under her breath, she asked, “You know more about what’s been going on than I, so . . . how are we going to do this?”

  “I know only parts of it,” he returned in a murmur of his own. Gesturing along the path the treeman had taken, he started walking with her toward the Grove and her home. “Teral has an idea, now that he’s seen all three of us controlling that thing with our attunement.”

  “I’d like
to hear it, Teral,” Saleria stated, looking straight at Aradin. It was a subtle courtesy she had seen some of the others at the Convocation giving to Orana Niel.

  Aradin almost handed his body over to his Guide, but checked himself. Now was not the time to be swapping consciousnesses, not when Teral had far more experience at watching for danger out of the corners of his Host’s eyes than he himself did. “Teral says most Guardians work in conjunction with their Fountain, at their Fountain, to cover the area affected by its magics. That it’s easier to start from that strongest position. And that . . . ah . . . yes, and that it’s possible to set up scrying spells to track down anything carrying the taste of the Grove’s locus-rifts.”

  Saleria nodded, reasoning it through. “Yes, that makes sense. Since most of the magic has been confined within its walls all this time, the stuff that reeks of the Grove outside those walls should be easy to find.”

  “It may take time, but if we sweep around the Grove and the outlying land in the same direction the aether circles, we should be able to use the crest of the wave to augment our own efforts—that’s my own suggestion,” he added.

  She smiled slightly, skirting another patch of rubble. “Considering you didn’t preface it with ‘Teral says,’ I figured as much.”

  He smiled back, and caught her hand. “I’ve missed you. How much longer will the Convocation take?”

  “Another week or so—is that an azalea bush? With little snake heads for flowers?” Saleria asked, taken aback at the raggedly spherical bush-thing slowly moving up the street. It did so by shifting its serpent-heads to make itself sort of tumble and roll this way and that.

  “I . . . really can’t say,” Aradin replied cautiously, unsure he wanted to get close enough to tell. “The real question is, with, what, forty heads? With forty heads . . . what does it eat, and with what part does it excrete?”

  Caught off guard by the oddball question, she chuckled and leaned into him, letting their shoulders bump as they walked. “I’ve missed you terribly, too, Aradin. Both of you, Teral. I can only stay a day or so; the Nightfallers want me to be on hand to represent Katan when the, ah, priest of the Independence of Mandare—some rude, woman-hating kingdom somewhere to the east—has his chance to speak with his God.”

  “Oh?” Aradin asked. “I’ve heard of the Mandarites, and they’re just southeast of Darkhana by a few weeks of sailing. But Katan is its own continent, with no other neighbors other than Nightfall. What have they to do with you?”

  “It seems they’ve tried to invade and claim Katani and Nightfaller territories for their own without either of our nations’ permission, and Queen Kelly wants me to help lay out some strict ground rules for their future behavior. Particularly if they ever want to get near the Convocation again.” She shrugged, then stopped, watching the snake-bush thing warily. “I think it’s spotted us. Let’s tell it to head back, and anything else in our path, shall we?”

  “Right. Back to the Grove,” Aradin and Teral ordered the mutation, putting rift-power behind their combined will. The serpent-azalea hesitated, fumbled a bit, then got itself lurching into movement the other way.

  “Go on,” Saleria urged with voice and will, making it lurch-tumble a little faster. She swung their clasped hands a little. “I’m not going to be able to stay longer than a day . . . but at least I do mean a full day. Hopefully this won’t take that long to clean up. The Grove-escapees, I mean. I, um, won’t be able to stay long enough to help put Groveham back together. I have to head back for the Mandarite thing.”

  She wrinkled her nose at the other signs of fighting and fire-damage.

  Aradin squeezed her fingers. “I know what you meant. We have about an hour until sunset, locally, but we don’t need daylight to track magical energies. The first thing we need to do is walk the wall and repair it, since somehow I doubt that treeman used the door to your house.”

  “He was certainly almost tall enough to just step over the wall. Or she, or whatever it was,” Saleria agreed. She shook it off, and squeezed his hand lightly. “Kata and Jinga gave me visions of you and the deacon over the last few days. You in that cell, Nannan bringing you your first real meal . . . Some of what Shanno suffered was funny, but this . . . This isn’t funny. I honestly don’t know what to do. About assigning penance, or punishment, or whatever. Restitution I guess is the best word.”

  Glad he didn’t have to explain what had happened to him to keep him from stopping Shanno, Aradin gave her some of the ideas he’d been mulling over during his daylight incarcerations. “Fine everyone involved. Hit them in their income. Shanno, the captain of the guard he somehow blackmailed into helping imprison me, the other guards . . . take some of their wages and share it out to all the people whose homes were damaged. Make them labor by hand and by spell to restore what was ruined in these last few days.”

  She mulled that over, then nodded. “That’s a good idea. It forces them to live with the ongoing troubles they have caused, days and months and years of consequences, because they didn’t take a few extra minutes to really think through in advance what would honestly happen if they made the wrong choices. I’ll have to consult with Prelate Lanneraun, and then with the Department of Temples, though. I may be the highest-ranked cleric here in Groveham, but I’m not Shanno’s superior, never mind the prelate’s.”

  Aradin winced in memory, touching his stomach. At her concerned glance, he brushed off her worries. “Oh, it’s nothing. I’m just remembering how much Lanneraun made my stomach hurt with all the laughing I did.”

  “Oh, Gods . . . he didn’t tell you the weasels in the wedding cake story, did he?” Saleria asked with a wince, instantly sympathetic when he nodded. She touched her own stomach. “I was sore for a full week after he told me that one—I’m sorry I forgot to warn you about that old man’s wicked sense of humor. And yes, I know they’re technically ferrets, but ‘weasels’ sounds better.”

  “Yes, it does,” he agreed. “By the way, Teral says the serpent-bush is slowing down. He thinks it may need another command.”

  “Or maybe it’s just getting tired because it’s an azalea bush with snake heads instead of flowers,” she countered. “But I guess we can give it a magical push to keep it moving—I will be so heartily glad when we get the Grove tamed and returned to normal. Or as close to it as we can. A year from now, five years, or fifty . . .”

  “We’ll get it done,” he promised her.

  FIFTEEN

  With the wards on the wall unpowered, two chunks of the stone barrier had been damaged enough to let plenty of bush-beasts through. There were two other treemen wandering around, too; one had headed northeast into the hills away from Groveham, and the other southeast into farmland. Saleria paused at the house to have Daranen dig through the Keepers’ archives in the basement of her home to look for instructions on how to repair the wardings, and focused on that aspect of the work for several hours. She had to unward and unlock the main gates to allow all the scattered mutations to return safely to the Grove, but at least that way they wouldn’t undo all the repairs she had to make.

  Aradin headed into the Bower to start reining in the ever-circling energies of the Grove with Teral’s help. Since all that power had to go somewhere, they used the excess magic to start identifying, tagging, and compelling anything within four days’ walk with the resonance-signatures of their two locus trees to return to the Grove, find a place to plant themselves, and rest. When Saleria joined them—laden with a basket of food picked up from Nannan, filled with good energy-boosting vegetables and stamina-boosting meats and cheeses—most of the bush-beast mutations were on their way back. Adding her locus-rift’s powers to the mix made the resulting combination of spells look like it was going to catch everything that had escaped over the last couple of days.

  By that time, it was near dawn, the air cool but promising the heat of another late-summer day. Aradin sighed and leaned against one of his tables, the one the basket was still on. He plucked out a handful of nuts and
raisins from one of the wide-mouthed bowls the housekeeper had packed, and looked around the Bower. The soft pastel nodules embedded in the roots and branches forming the Bower dome were no longer static lights; some shone brightly, linked to the spells the three of them had woven. The rest pulsed slowly with the flow of energies being managed, forming a rippling, soft rainbow over their heads.

  Somewhere out there to the east, he could hear the creak-and-thump of one of the treemen returning and looking for a place to take root and rest, as commanded. The eastern sky above the hills had turned from star-strewn black to a dusky shade of dark blue, and a few of the local birds were starting to twitter. Tired though he was, he took a few moments to chew and contemplate.

  Saleria moved up beside him and leaned back against the table, too. Sidling close, she sighed and leaned against him, letting her temple rest on his shoulder. “A lot of work . . . but a good night’s work. Yes?”

  He nodded, swallowed, and offered her the last few nuts and raisins in his hand. Gently grasping his fingers, she pulled them open and nibbled the treats directly from his skin, then pressed a kiss to the center of his palm.

  Aradin smiled softly and closed his fingers around the lingering imprint of her lips. He tucked his arm around her and rested the side of his head on the top of hers. “An interesting week, I’d say. I’m glad Nannan told you no one was killed in the rampage. I’d hate to have that on my conscience. And your permission to ‘do anything it takes’ also helped . . . even if it was a bit backward, saving the Grove by wreaking havoc with it.”

  “Blame that one on Shanno, because you were saving it from him.” She shook her head slightly, not enough to dislodge their comfortable side by side cuddle. “Enough of him . . . You know, Kata and Jinga approve of you. In the Grove, and in my life.”