The Well of Shadows (The Shadow Watch series Book 4) by S.A. Klopfenstein

Author:S.A. Klopfenstein [Klopfenstein, S.A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Guardian Grey Publishing
Published: 2021-05-14T16:00:00+00:00

The palace servant Teishi escorted Tori and her companions down wide, glowing hallways to the rear of the Silver Palace. The inner chambers were well guarded, both by ordinary soldiers with golden helmets as well as the red-robed Cleansers. The huntresses offered Ren hard glances, but as Tori had hoped, they seemed less interested in Valeria.

She thought it must have something to do with the artificial nature of the chancellor’s Morphs. Considering the Kingdom of Malai had been reclusive for centuries, coupled by the disinterest in the Eastern World by the chancellors of Osha, Tori doubted many of these Cleansers had ever encountered Morphs. The creatures would have had little incentive to search for sorcerers in the Untainted Kingdom.

And this could prove quite useful.

They passed through a courtyard lush with the expansive branches of a curious sort of tree. Dozens of narrow trunks lined the paths like pillars, in a perfectly symmetrical pattern radiating from a much larger trunk at the center. Their limbs intermingled into one gigantic canopy about fifty feet overhead.

“I take it you have never seen a cestral before.”

The voice did not belong to Teishi, but to Tori’s surprise, the Grand Matron. The elegant woman reclined upon a carved bench near the center of the courtyard. She rose and greeted them with a bow.

“These gardens are beautiful,” Tori said. “A cestral. I have never heard of it.”

“It is a marvelous wonder,” the Matron said. “This particular one is formed from over one hundred seedlings. All interconnected at the root, as well as the canopy. It would be impossible now to tell where one organism begins and the other ends.”

“Did it grow naturally in that pattern?” Tori asked.

“It is carefully cultivated by the palace gardeners. Each seedling began on its own, but slowly grafted itself to the others, uniting with their neighbors. Now, they form a singular entity. It is how the Malaian clans see themselves, all radiating from the central trunk of the scions. We are all connected and our fates are intertwined.”

“And outsiders?” asked Ren.

The woman’s dark eyes narrowed at him. “The court is a reminder that our connection extends to all humankind. However, like any good gardener, there are certain shoots which must be removed, while others are grafted in.”

“Osha was once counted among those grafted in,” Ren countered.

“In a very different age. The Western World has changed much since the Old World. Its people accepted dark notions, and they spread like the seeds of a thistle. Slow at first, but in time, it overwhelms the entire garden, until nothing of its former self can be distinguished.”

“Osha welcomed magic only very recently.”

The Grand Matron scowled. “It is not magic that corrupts, no more than wine creates a drunkard. There is a thirst inside all men and women. You Westerners turn to gods to relieve you of the responsibility of quenching it.”

“Aren’t there gods in Malai?” Tori asked. “What about your Untainted One?”

The Matron smiled. “For someone who has had such an effect on the world, Tori Burodai, you know little of it.

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