Jean Johnson - The Grove

The trick was to get them separated and herded away from the wall. Thankfully, they weren’t intelligent; once pointed in a particular direction, they just shuffled that way until nightfall. They did, however, have to be kept away from the sunflowers. Saleria didn’t know why the two flower species couldn’t get along. She wasn’t an herbalist, wasn’t a gardener, and frankly wasn’t certain if anyone would ever know enough about the oddities here in the Grove to control them. As it was, for two hundred years, the Grove Keepers had been forced to focus on the simple containment and magic-draining of the many plants and the sources of their warping.

Once the mobile marigolds were pointed away from the wall, Saleria continued on her way. Every morning and evening, just after sunrise and just before sunset, she patrolled the walls. The brisk walk did her good, keeping her fit and healthy, and so long as she kept up with the chore, it wasn’t too onerous. Except she couldn’t quite shake the unsettled feeling that lingered in the wake of her nightmare. It left her feeling dissatisfied. Disaffected.

Grumpy.

She didn’t let those emotions out, however. No mage of her great power level dared work their will from unchecked, unfiltered emotions. Certainly not near such a great source of power as what was contained within the Grove walls. At three points in each day, Saleria had to attend one of the three locus trees, giant growths which had been grown in an attempt to contain the magics spilling out of the three hair-thin rifts in the Veil between Life and the Dark. Dragged into the Dark by the deaths of people and animals, excess magic flowed back out through those rifts.

Unchecked, unfiltered, and most importantly, unpurposed , that magic warped whatever it touched in ways a little too close to random for comfort. Unfettered emotions would only make everything worse. The north tree she attended after her first round with the walls. The south tree, just before her last round. The east tree she handled either right before or right after lunch, depending on how many duties she had around that point in the day.

Each trip took about an hour to tend the garden and siphon off the excess energy, and up to two hours to focus it and the energies collected by her staff crystal into prayers. Any modestly powered, competently educated mage trained in combat or at least self-defense could handle trimming the path along the inside of the wall and—on a good day—handle collecting the energies off the locus trees. But focusing it into fueling prayers in ways that were precise, controlled, and effective without unwanted side effects required a powerful priest-mage.

“ You don’t need an assistant to do your morning rounds for you, ” Saleria mock-recited from her last attempt at getting one out of the High Prelate for her district, Nestine. She kept her magic tightly under wraps, but her words echoed off the wall to her right, pitched nasally high in echo of her superior priestess, a thin, pinch-faced woman who had wielded her political power perhaps a little too long. “ Your duties are light, you have the time, and anything less than your best effort would be an indulgence! ”

She swiped hard at a branch in her way. Never mind that most Grove Keepers last only ten or fifteen years before exhausting themselves to the point where they have to retire, and that an assistant would lighten the strain immensely . . .

She slashed at a fern growing near the waterfall cascading down through a specially built channel in the wall, forcing it back. It shrank in on itself with an almost shy level of swiftness, making her feel sorry for taking out her irritation on the poor thing. Personalizing the plants could be dangerous. Here in a place where magic literally was a work of random will, a stray thought could twist things toward a particular idea, even make them real. Breathing deeply, she relaxed as best she could, clearing her mind, and continued across the little crescent-moon bridge fording the stream.

From up here, at the highest, easternmost end of the Grove, she had a good view of all three towering locus trees. Dark brown–barked and gnarled in their limbs, coated with leaves and moss tufts of a hundred different shades, they moved in subtle ways that had nothing to do with the wind, and everything to do with the power they struggled to contain. This close to the eastern locus, the creaking was quite audible. Loud enough that it almost hid the rustling approach of something through the ferns and bluebells of the underbrush.

Wary, Saleria waited. A minute or so after she stopped moving, something slightly larger than the size of her head cautiously poked its wiggling snout out from under the bushes. She held herself still, until the animal revealed itself one paw-step at a time. It took her a few moments to identify it, not as a rat but rather as a shrew. A very, very overgrown shrew. A creature known for eating three times its weight on a daily basis in its thumb-length size. This one was as long as her forearm, which meant it could very well be interested in eating all of her.

It leaped, jaws gaping in anticipation of a meaty bite. Her staff slashed down, cutting the creature in half. Side-stepping the fallen bits, she pinned the front half to the ground with the point of the business end, grimacing at the blood now staining the mossy ground. This part of her job, she didn’t like, but she liked the thought of being bitten even less.

She didn’t tap the creature’s remains with the crystal end of the staff; that was blood-magic, and forbidden. Killing an animal for food was acceptable, even necessary for good health. Plants alone did not provide all the nutrition a human needed to survive on this world, after all. But to steal their life-energies for magical purposes, that was what demons did, not good people. It was one of the oldest of the Laws of Gods and Man, that animal sacrifice—humans included—was anathema.

Whatever scraps of life-energy that weren’t drawn along with the animal’s spirit into the Dark, on its way to the Afterlife, were reserved for the plants to absorb. The cycle had to be preserved. Plants gave life-energy, the power behind all magic, to all the animals, and that energy was returned when their bodies returned to the earth at the end of life. Stealing life-energy for magic weakened mages, tainting them with the demonic touch of the Netherhells. Only in very special circumstances would a mage—a good mage—ever spill blood, and usually only their own.

Once, early in her apprenticeship to Grove Keeper Mardos, Saleria asked him what would happen to the magics spilled when these warped animals were slain. His reply had been vague. Sometimes it seemed like the energies just returned to the plants in the usual, normal, perfectly sane way. Sometimes, though, it seemed to quicken the mutation of the nearest plants.

Yet another patch of Grove ground I’ll have to watch for abnormalities. If I had an apprentice or an assistant, I could spend my time in trance, examining what happens to the flow of powers. But no, I’m not allowed to bring along anyone to watch my back .

Grimacing, she muttered under her breath another odious quote, mincing the words half through her nose, until she sounded almost like a buzzing wasp. “ Most powerful mages aren’t interested in living a priestly life, and so all of our powerful priest-mages are needed exactly where they already are, with none to spare. ”

Bollocks to that.

The moss didn’t seem to be wiggling or growing or changing in any way. At least, not right away. Content for now that the body was truly dead, she nudged both halves a little farther away from the wall-edged trail so the remnants of the shrew-thing could decompose, returning its physical nutrients as well as its energies to the soil. Stepping carefully around the stained patch, she continued on her morning rounds.