Bite Of Winter (Fae's Captive #3)(17)

“She manifests physically now. The older a fae, the stronger its feral. It seems your mate is on the verge of manifesting his own. I can hear it inside him, desperate to claim his mate.”

I swallow hard. “Wow.”

“Indeed.” She points to the plant. “This is supposed to produce dwarfberries. It’s a vining plant but hasn’t been able to branch out.” Looking at her white-tipped fingers, she frowns. “All this power, and I can’t do anything about it. Life is its own particular magic, and not one I can control.”

“Let me take a look.” I dig into the dark brown earth at the plant’s roots. Rotted ooze covers its damp roots.

“Delantis.” A woman approaches, her hair tied up in neat knots, and her face something like a deer’s. “I didn’t know we’d have such an honor this day.” She bows low.

“Chatara, I just brought Taylor by to see if she had any thoughts on our problem. She’s an alchemist.”

“Chemist,” I correct and peer more closely at the goo on my fingertips. It stinks like decay. “Are they all like this?”

“The plants? Yes.” Chatara eyes me curiously. “It started in the back reaches of the fields and spread in a matter of months. We eventually set fire to everything in an effort to stop the plague and planted new seeds, but they still fell ill.”

“Did you treat the soil?”

“Treat it?” Chatara blinks, her doe-like eyes big and brown. “It was on fire. Nothing survived.”

I stand. “Do you have a microscope?”

Chatara blinks even harder. “A … A what?”

“It’s a …” I chew on my lip and hold my dirty hands out in front of me … like an idiot. “It’s where you use glass lenses to magnify something.”

“Magnify?” Delantis peers at my fingers.

“I need to see what this is. But up close. Like the tiny stuff it’s made of.” I hold up the dark green sludge. “If I can see what’s in here, I can maybe figure out a solution. I’m suspecting fungal by the looks of it, but I can’t be sure.”

“But we can all see it.” Chatara points. “It’s rot.”

“The rot is a symptom. There’s a microorganism attacking the roots, which results in the decay. Like when you have a skin infection and a sore shows up. The sore is the symptom. That’s what this rot is. I need to see the tiny organisms of this in order to tell what it is.”

“Ahhh.” Delantis nods. “I see.” She holds out her hand and touches the tip of my finger, then looks up at the stone ceiling far above. The white light grows so bright around her that I wince, but then she holds her hand to her face and blows on the bit of rot on her fingertips. It floats on a phantom white wind and expands, filling the space above our heads as it grows and grows. From unintelligible dark green mush, it stretches and expands farther and farther.

Some of the workers yell and run toward us, cowering as Delantis’s magic unfurls. She’s created a microscope larger than an iMax theater, zooming in until I can see the fine detail.

“Holy shit.” I stare at the strands of plant matter that float huge and bright over my head. Her white light shines through all of it, highlighting everything wrong. “Whoa, Delantis. Stop there.” I point to a particularly nasty spot. “Fungus. Like I said. Looks like fusarium wilt, though it could be any number of other fungi. Can you go deeper, Delantis? I’d like to see the cellular level.”

She obliges, not even breaking a sweat as she increases the magnification.

“Yep. That’s it.” I walk down one of the rows and point over my head to a patch of cells. “This here? These are vascular cells, but these dark spots are paired arbuscules.” I look back at Chatara.

Her silver eyes are blank. “I don’t know what—”

“It means the rot is affecting the plants’ vascular systems. Basically, the water processes and eventually photosynthesis. The fire didn’t work because this fungus hides in the soil. You can’t stop it because it’s everywhere down here.”

“In the soil?” Chatara wrings her hands. “But we spent a century moving this dirt here from the Misty River. If we had to remove it and start over, we wouldn’t survive.”

Delantis blinks and lowers her hand, the image above our heads fading.

“That was kind of amazing.” I walk back to her.

“I have tricks, young one.” Her silver eyes twinkle.

“We’re doomed.” Chatara leans against the damp wall.

“Not at all.” I shake the dirt from my hands. “We can fix this. Do you have more seeds or seedlings?”

“We do but we’ve been holding them back because of—” She gestures at the dying fields.

“Good. How about shovels, pickaxes, laborers?” I didn’t think Chatara could look more confused. I was wrong.

“The work begins.” Delantis smiles and starts climbing the stairs back the way we came.

“Yes.” Chatara points to the closest Vundi. “Get all the things she says.” Turning back to me, she asks, “What are we going to do?”

“The waterfall.”

“The waterfall?”

“When I came in, I saw that beautiful waterfall, but what I also saw was the mineral nahcolite. The white crystals along the stone beneath the falls—that’s likely a mix of limestone and nahcolite. I’d need a closer look to be certain, but I’m pretty sure it has what you need.”