The Grove (Guardians of Destiny)

by Jean Johnson

  The Bower was rapidly filling with tables, storage chests, various bits of alchemical gear, and more. The moss had been trimmed well back from several paths, and the intermingled saps saturating the ground had been collected into barrels for storage until it could be separated and purified or burned somehow. A stray corner of her mind, bored with the mirror-scryed meeting, wondered just how different the place would look in another month, if it had only taken a single turning of Brother Moon to change things as much as they had . . . and only in the Bower, so far. The entire span of the Grove awaited their efforts.

  Listening with half her attention to what Guardian Marton was reporting from the prophecy archives of Fortuna—which wasn’t much more than what they already knew—she wondered if she dared sneak off-mirror long enough to grab a mortar and pestle to grind something while she listened. Anything to help keep her normally active body busy, however important and interesting the discussions at hand might be.

  * * *

  (Wake up, both of you!)

  Guhh . . . whah? Wits swimming in a fog of deep sleep interrupted, Aradin became aware of himself and his surroundings. He had been sleeping in his favorite position, wrapped around Saleria from behind. The moment he identified the warm curves in his arm, the shapely naked bottom pressed against his equally naked groin, he instinctively cuddled closer. Nudged her with his loins, hoping it was early enough for . . .

  (Oh for the love of the Light—wake UP!)

  Both of them jolted, Aradin with wide eyes and Saleria with a gasped, “T-Teral?”

  (Yes, and I apologize for coming back so early in the morning without warning, but it is time.)

  “It’s time?” she asked. “Time for wha—oh!”

  Aradin, struggling more with his body’s reaction to hers than to Teral’s words, found the source of his interest elbowing him accidentally in her awkward wriggle to get out of the bed. “What the . . . ?”

  “Convocation! It’s time!” she clarified.

  His eyes snapped open. Then squinched shut as she rapped the lightglobe by her bed, flooding the night-dark room with light. He grunted as his eyes smarted, waiting for them to adjust to the abrupt glow.

  (Both of you need to hurry. The people of Nightfall are going to have all the petitions timed in the order of each priest’s arrival, so they want Katan’s representative to show up quickly, as a diplomatic courtesy from their rival, Nightfall. I have to go tap the rest of my fellow Guides in the contact-chain, but I won’t be long.)

  “Right, right . . .”

  Sliding out of the bed, Aradin squinted against the rapping of another lightglobe and followed Saleria into the dressing room. Now that they were more or less stationed here in Groveham permanently, and Nannan was able to do his laundry along with the rest—he and Teral had scrounged up and enchanted some tools to help that task go more easily for the non-mage housekeeper—he was keeping half of his things in Saleria’s dressing room. Their dressing room.

  “Teral says they want you to arrive among the first, since the order of petitions heard will be in the order the priests arrive. As a courtesy from Nightfall to Katan, since they’re stealing your nation’s chance at reconvening it, as well as gaining their independence in the act.” He reached for a clean set of undertrousers.

  She nodded, barely keeping her balance as she struggled into her own undergarments. “More power to them—oh! Prelate Lanneraun! I’m scheduled to go visit him today for lunch to discuss the upcoming Autumn Festival, one of my eight public appearances. And I thought of something: Aradin Teral, I give you both permission as officially appointed assistants to the Keeper of the Grove to use its powers in any way you best see fit while I am gone, in the understanding that you shall hide nothing from me when I return. I almost forgot about your oath-binding, but now you should be free to use the Grove energies to defend it against any possibility. I just need to find some paper and a pen and an inkpot for a note to the Prelate . . .”

  “I’ll pray to all four Gods that it won’t ever have to come to that. And I can go visit Prelate Lanneraun for you,” Aradin reminded her, touching her arm in brief reassurance before pulling on a pair of trousers. “We don’t need to waste time with a letter. If nothing else, I can always tell him to postpone making the arrangements until your return.”

  “Aradin, we don’t know how long this Convocation will take. The ancient records spoke of it lasting up to a month! If I am gone more than a month, the whole festival would have to be postponed, and that’s not going to happen,” she reminded him. “Not here in Groveham, the town right next to the Sacred Grove.”

  “Then as your assistant, simply appoint me to stand in your stead,” he offered. “Or better yet, ask that other Guardian, uhh . . . Dominor, if there’s a way to transmit a mirror-scrying of the Convocation on that mirror Guardian Kerric gave you, and we’ll make that the focal point of the festival. Or even a captured recording if you come back early, like what we’ve been viewing of the Netherhell invasions.”

  Her brows rose. “That is actually a very good idea. I’ll talk with Guardian Dominor as soon as I can, since he has one of Kerric’s mirrors, too. He did say yesterday that he and Guar . . . er, ex-Guardian Serina had returned to Nightfall, now that the nun-lady, Mother Naima, was back in control of Koral-tai. Something about crafting spells to make it safe to move their newborn twins.”

  Aradin nudged her hands, which had paused midway through donning her pink-edged white tunic. “Keep putting on your clothes, woman.”

  Nodding, she continued donning them. He did as well, shrugging into a tunic and slipping his feet into a pair of house-sandals. Picking up the belt, which now held a leather scroll case filled with a list of Katan’s needs which Daranen had compiled for them, as well as the knife and the pouch added earlier, he helped buckle it around her waist while she adjusted the fit of her overvest. He handed her the backpack next, then helped swirl the cloak into place over it all.

  “It’s a good thing my clothes are spell-stitched for comfort,” she muttered, “or I’d sweat to death before I even arrived.”

  (I’m back,) Teral announced, returning to his Host’s Doorway. (Good, she’s ready—not that Witchcloak, the big one! The one they specially made for priest-transport.)

  (Right, sorry,) Aradin shifted his hand from the robe that had the tan outer lining to a more voluminous, all-black robe. Shrugging into it, he turned to Saleria, cupped her face in his hands, and kissed her. Not a very long kiss, but a heartfelt one. Pulling back a little, he rested his forehead against hers. “Put your trust in Teral and the other Witches; we are all bound to help you in this trip. If you absolutely cannot return through the Dark a second time, it will be alright. You have the money for both ship passage and mirror-Gatings, once you reach the mainland. Just send word back through our fellow Witches to Teral, is all I ask.”

  “Yes, Groveham does have a mirror-Gate station,” Saleria agreed, distracted with worry. “Should I get something to eat before I go? I don’t know if they’ll have food.”

  “That’s what the travel cakes are for,” he reminded her. “But you should be fine. Besides, some people feel the urge to vomit after traveling through the Dark, so, ah, best if you don’t have anything in there.”

  (Ready?) Teral asked both of them, since Aradin was still touching the Keeper.

  They both nodded, and Aradin kissed Saleria one last, quick time before releasing her. Shrugging the hood of his cloak up over his head, he opened wide the deep black edges and swept them around her. “Grab my body with yours,” he directed, “and be ready to have it shift into Teral’s. The moment it does, he will pull you through my Doorway into the Dark. Do not be afraid . . . though you may feel uncomfortable.”

  “I’m not afraid,” Saleria promised him—both of them. She wrapped her arms around his chest and Aradin wrapped the folds of his Witchcloak around them both, sealing out the light from the enchant
ed white globe resting in a bracket near the dressing room door. “I love you both.”

  “Oh, sure, now you mention it,” Teral quipped dryly with both voice and mind, as much to distract her from the sudden shifting of the flesh under her arms as to simply comment about it. Wrapping his arms around her, he pulled her from the comfortable land of the living to the breathless, gloomy chill of the Dark. “Keep your thoughts firmly on me, if not on our destination.”

  She wanted to say, Considering I have no clue where we’re going . . . , but she carefully blanked that out of her mind. She also wanted to breathe, but didn’t know how, in this horrible, uncanny place. Aradin and Teral hadn’t said so directly, but she had the feeling that thoughts became reality here in the Dark. So instead of dwelling on either fact, she visualized as strongly as any prayer that Teral would take them to exactly where they needed to be in just three easy steps—and sure enough, in just three steps, they were in a strange, dimly lit place by a tree.

  The ground around the odd-looking tree was crowded with the bodies of black-robed men and women moving back and forth. It wasn’t easy, walking with her arms wrapped around Teral’s chest, but they managed. She had been warned not to let go, for without a Witch’s holy powers to shelter her, the Dark could quickly become a very confusing and dangerous place. The last thing the Keeper of the Grove needed was to get physically lost between Life and the Afterlife.

  “Priest coming through!” Teral called out, escorting her into the midst. The sea of faces—since the dark robes were hard to see in the gloom—parted before them, until they came to a tallish, black-haired man with astounding, vivid blue eyes. “Saleria, this is Guide Niel, who will take you through to Host Orana’s Doorway. Niel, this is Guardian Saleria,” the gray-bearded man told the clean-shaven one. “Make sure she gets anything she needs while she’s in Nightfall.”

  “Within the constraints of time and duty, she will have priority in our attention,” Niel promised. He touched Saleria’s shoulder, gripping it for a moment before sliding his arm around her. “Shift your grasp to me, and be ready to be holding my Host. It will be safe to let go when you see the light of day.”

  She nodded and wrapped her arms around his muscular chest, squeezing her eyes shut as the other Witches helped pull the folds of his cloak around the two of them. A shuffling step back and to the side, and the hard male chest morphed into a softer feminine one. A moment later, light bloomed around her, air rushed in to meet her . . . and nausea welled up inside of her.

  With a nudge from the Witch, Saleria let go and staggered free, trying not to heave. Hands caught her, holding her more or less steady while she fought a battle between casting up the lack of food in her stomach and the desperate need for air. A brief retch escaped her, but nothing actually emerged, sparing everyone that embarrassment.

  “Easy, you’re okay now,” a female voice soothed her. It took a few seconds for the urge to stop, and a few more beyond that for her to be able to focus her eyes. When she did so, she found herself in a stone corridor lined with an astonishing number of images carved into the solid granite walls. So solid, she couldn’t see any seams, so it was a set of walls that either had been magically grown or had been carved out of a mountain. Probably the latter, since magically it was far easier to part and rend stone than grow it seamlessly whole. At least it gave her something to focus her mind upon.

  For a moment, all she could think of was the line from the Guardians of Destiny poem, Lost beneath the granite face, but then her gaze focused on the woman holding her by the shoulders. A little shorter than Saleria, the other woman looked to be about the same age, mid-twenties, clad in similarly cut, dark green trousers, but with a matching dark linen corset over her pale green tunic. Strawberry blonde hair and aquamarine eyes met her curious gaze.

  “Feeling better?” the woman asked. Saleria nodded. “Good. Priestess Ora,” the woman stated, looking over Saleria’s shoulder, “a little warning about how they might react in coming through your Dark-place would have been in order. Thankfully, she didn’t actually puke anything up on me.” A squeeze of Saleria’s arm, and the redhead released her, facing her again. “Now then . . . I am incipient Queen Kelly of Nightfall, and you’re the second of a long line of priests who are about to descend upon us all, when we’re not the least bit ready for you . . . but we’re going to try to be. May I have your name, your nation, and the name or names of your Patronage?”

  “Ahh . . . I am Guardian Saleria, Keeper of the Sacred Grove of Katan, and my Patrons are Kata and Jinga,” she said, mind reeling with the thought that she had dry-retched over the boots of this high-ranked woman. “Ah, no offense with my stomach, and . . . sorry.”

  The incipient queen chuckled and patted her on the shoulder. “No offense taken—Ora, you might want to go back to the amphitheater hall and just wait while people start coming through, rather than having to pull them out of that cloak of yours in the middle of a corridor. I’ll send someone down to help you . . . Priestess Saleria, Rora already took the priest of Fortuna off to get him some rooms, so I guess you’re stuck with either following me around, or heading back into the amphitheater with Witch Ora, there, to wait until we can get some actual servants down here—we’ve had a bit of an emergency, making it imperative that we start the Convocation unexpectedly early, you see.”

  She didn’t see, but Saleria nodded anyway. It wasn’t her place to worry over something she didn’t know anything about yet. But that did bring up the request she had promised to make. “Oh—I need to see Guardian Dominor. Do you know who he is, and where I can find him?”

  The oddly dressed queen chuckled. “Go with Priestess Ora, there; she’ll take you back to the amphitheater. As for Dominor, he’s busy unlocking the great doors between the amphitheater and the Fountain Hall. They’re only to be used by the Gods, of course; the rest of us mere mortals have been instructed to take the long way around—it seems he’s picked up at least a couple bad habits from Rydan since taking over the Guardianship of this place. Don’t worry, priestess; he’ll be along shortly to start getting ready for everything. If nothing else, you’ll see him when the Convocation begins.”

  “I really should see him beforehand. I promised I would ask if he could figure out a way to pass along a scrying of the Convocation to Guardian Kerric, of the Tower,” Saleria said. “I figured everyone around the world will want to see a recording of what happens here, and as it’s Guardian Dominor’s Fountain . . .”

  Queen Kelly blinked her blue eyes twice, then shrugged. “I suppose it makes sense you’d have some magical way of doing that.” Before Saleria could ask why she phrased it so oddly, the other woman lifted her wrist and tapped a strange bracelet on it. “I’ll call him and have him meet you in the amphitheater. If you’ll go with Orana?”

  Turning, Saleria found herself face to face with a woman in a voluminous black Witchcloak, with green eyes and a braided coronet of hair just a little more golden than her own. The Witch smiled at her, eyes dipping down briefly over Saleria’s cloaked body and back in an assessing look. “So you’re the priestess our Brother Witch has fallen in love with?”

  “If you mean Aradin Teral, then yes. Guardian Saleria, Keeper of the Sacred Grove of Katan,” Saleria introduced herself.

  “Sir Orana Niel, Darkhanan Witch, High Priestess, and twofold Knight of Arbra . . . it’s a long story,” the other woman stated. She gestured behind her. “If we walk this way, it won’t take long to get back to the amphitheater. You may call me Ora if you like. While my strongest instinct is to help Queen Kelly organize everything her people will need for this Convocation, I have just been reminded a second time that I will be pretty much useless for anything but bringing two hundred forty-six more clergy through my Doorway.”

  Saleria gestured as well. “Lead on. So long as I get to attend the Convocation of Gods and Man, you can put me wherever you wish.”

  Orana chuckled. “Tempting. Actuall
y, given how both you and Priest Etrechim—the representative from Fortuna—came through first . . . if you could stay by me and comfort the rest of the priests coming out of the Dark, that would be very useful. At least, until we get more helpers down here.”

  “Alright,” Saleria agreed. Ducking into an alcove, the pair stepped into a vast, vaulted chamber lined with hundreds of benches arrayed in curved rows on one side of the hall and hundreds of thronelike stone chairs on the other half. There were two others here: a middle-aged man with gray-salted black hair, and a youngish woman with plain ash-brown hair. “If anyone actually retches on me, I’ll deal with it, but I reserve the right to go change clothes before you’re allowed to start the Convocation. Just for dignity’s sake. I know the Gods have seen every moment of my life, even at my worst, but this is a formal occasion.”

  The other woman chuckled again, heading for the center of the amphitheater. “I think you’ll be a good match for Aradin Teral.” At Saleria’s questioning look, the Witch-priestess smiled at her. “I’ve become rather good at judging a person’s character over the years.”

  “So you think I’ll be good for him?” Saleria asked. She guessed that, being a fellow Witch, this woman and her Guide must have been talking with Aradin and Teral all along. The name sounded familiar.

  “I think he’ll be good for you. Ah, here we are. Lady Rora, Priest Etrechim of Fortuna, this is Priestess Saleria of Katan.”