Page 166 of A Baron of Bonds
THE MEDICUS TRIAL
I was goingto get an earful for that one.
But she’d done it.
I just hoped she wasn’t bleeding all over the place like Figuerah had been.
I continued to pace the bank of the stream, fiddling with the rhyzolm in my pocket.
The next trial would be trivial for Karus.
Then she’d step through the portal and think she was coming home to me.
She wouldn’t.
And I’d wait here all day, promising myself I was doing the right thing.
Assuring myself that she’d make it through the last, just as I did. Just as all other Barons had before her.
She was meant to hold some of this power.
That truth needed no persuasion in my mind.
But it might in hers.
Chapter 73
Karus
THE AGRICOLA TRIAL
I was morecareful this time, catching myself and staying upright out of the portal.
I stood in a room of dark stone, a single ball of yellow light hovering at the ceiling. In the middle of the small room stood a short table. On the short table lay a small, square porcelain pot, its feet carved into a sprawl of flourishes.
I stepped closer, inspecting the contents. A single seed lay atop three inches of soil.
I picked it up, eyeing it closely.
“A cherry tree,” I realized.
This was Revich’s faith in me. It was a cherry tree I grew the first time I showed Heimlen what I could really do with my power.
Now, it seemed Rev wanted me to grow another, but a much smaller version.
“He didn’t give you much to work with.” I heard the Blightress somewhere behind me.
Tuning her out, I pressed the seed down into the fresh soil, sending tendrils of my magic up to the light to make it grow.
The room filled in brilliant sunlight, theSimulair Solumspell held somewhere by Revich, not by me.
I closed my eyes and wrapped my hands around the small pot, pouring growth, and beauty, and new life into my power.
A stem shot from the soil, soon forming wiry branches that grew into a trunk, withered as if it was a hundred years old and flaked in a curved shape. Next were the blooms, revealing themselves as tiny, pink blossoms.
I had to watch carefully and pull my power back as it grew, adjusting the strength I gave the tree, knowing if it grew too large, the pot would shatter.
This was a trial of precision. I needed to grow this cherry tree to just the right size for the porcelain pot given to me.
