Uprooted recap

Every ten years the wizard called the Dragon takes a village girl to his tower in return for protecting the valley from the malevolent Wood. Everyone expects him to choose accomplished Kasia, but he takes her untidy friend Agnieszka and discovers that she has a rare, intuitive form of magic. When the Wood captures Kasia, Agnieszka helps rescue and cleanse her. Prince Marek and the Falcon then force an expedition to recover Marek's mother, Queen Hanna, who has been preserved in the forest. Her return carries the Wood's corruption into the royal court and helps ignite war, murder, and a succession crisis. Agnieszka and the Dragon survive the collapse and enter the Wood's heart. They learn that its queen was the last of a people violently displaced from the valley. Agnieszka releases the souls trapped in the trees and answers vengeance with recognition and healing, breaking the Wood's control. She remains to restore the valley, and the Dragon returns to join her.

The Dragon, an immortal-seeming wizard, protects a chain of villages from the corrupted Wood in exchange for choosing one seventeen-year-old girl to live in his tower for ten years. Agnieszka and everyone in Dvernik expect him to select her poised, capable friend Kasia. Instead, after testing the eligible girls, he abruptly takes Agnieszka. Life in the tower is bewildering: the Dragon is remote and irritable, ordinary household work goes wrong around her, and his attempts to teach her standard spells seem to fail. Yet Agnieszka instinctively changes a simple working and produces magic in a way he has never seen. He realizes that she is not merely a servant but an untrained witch whose power follows rhythm, feeling, and immediate need rather than his precise formulas.

Agnieszka begins learning from the writings of the legendary witch Jaga, whose loose, intuitive spells suit her better than the Dragon's rigid method. During an attack from the Wood, she acts without permission to help her home village. The Wood's creatures take Kasia, a fate normally considered beyond remedy because anyone returned by the forest may carry its corruption. Agnieszka refuses to abandon her. Working with the Dragon, she uses a truth-revealing spell to find Kasia within the corruption and separate her from it. Kasia survives, but the ordeal changes her: she is unnaturally strong and no longer entirely ordinary. The rescue proves that Agnieszka and the Dragon can combine their very different forms of magic, and that the Wood's transformations are not always irreversible.

Prince Marek arrives with the court wizard called the Falcon. Marek's mother, Queen Hanna, disappeared into the Wood years ago, and Kasia's recovery convinces him that she can be saved. The Dragon warns that the queen may be bait and resists risking the valley, but Marek uses royal authority and force to secure Agnieszka's help. Their party enters the forest, where familiar paths shift and the Wood attacks both body and perception. They find the queen alive and unaged inside a heart-tree. Agnieszka frees her, and the group fights its way out with heavy losses. Although the queen appears distant and deeply shocked, the rescue succeeds. Agnieszka has helped return a powerful political figure from a place whose corruption is designed to hide inside those who escape it.

Agnieszka, Kasia, and the recovered queen are taken to the royal court. Scholars test Queen Hanna and declare her free of corruption, while Agnieszka's unconventional magic draws suspicion. The swordsmith-wizard Alosha is more willing than most to take her seriously. The queen recounts an attack connected to Rosya, and her return strengthens calls for war. Marek and the Falcon lead a campaign across the mountain border; the Dragon is compelled to support it, and Agnieszka follows. What begins as a military victory turns into slaughter as the queen's influence and the Wood's hidden reach intensify old hatreds. Agnieszka tries to stop the killing, but corrupted creatures and possessed soldiers spread chaos through the pass. She and the Dragon combine their magic on a destructive scale to contain the attack, saving survivors while leaving the armies shattered.

The survivors return to a capital already divided over war and succession. Evidence accumulates that Queen Hanna carried a subtle form of corruption out of the Wood, one able to exploit grief, ambition, and distrust rather than reveal itself in a simple test. Violence tears through the palace and kills the king and Crown Prince Sigmund. Marek moves to secure the throne, but his willingness to eliminate the remaining heirs brings him into direct conflict with Kasia. She kills him to protect the children. The Wood's plan has devastated the royal family and spread disorder far beyond its borders. Agnieszka and the Dragon escape the catastrophe and turn back toward the valley, where the forest is expanding openly and ordinary defenses can no longer hold it.

With the valley being consumed, Agnieszka concludes that burning the Wood cannot end the force directing it. She and the Dragon enter its heart and join their magic. Agnieszka sees the history preserved there: an earlier people lived among the trees until human rulers drove them out and killed them. Their last queen survived by binding herself to the forest, then trapped other minds in heart-trees and turned ancient loss into a campaign of possession and revenge. Agnieszka frees the imprisoned people and reaches the Wood-Queen with a memory of the home she lost. The queen lets go, and the forest's coordinated corruption collapses. Kasia chooses a life at court helping guard the surviving royal children. Agnieszka stays in the valley and patiently cleanses what can be healed. After an absence, the Dragon returns to the tower; he and Agnieszka reunite as partners in both magic and affection.

The Wood's power reaches the royal city through the corrupted Queen Hanna, destroying much of the ruling family and turning Marek's attempt to take the throne into a catastrophe. Kasia kills Marek when he threatens the surviving children. Agnieszka and the Dragon return to the valley as the forest advances. Instead of continuing to burn it from the edges, they enter its heart together. Agnieszka learns that the Wood-Queen is the remnant of an ancient people slaughtered and displaced by human settlers; she has trapped other minds in trees and prolonged that wrong through centuries of vengeance. Agnieszka uses her magic to release the trapped people and offers the Wood-Queen a peaceful memory of her lost home. The forest's organized malice breaks. Kasia goes back to the capital to help protect the young heirs, while Agnieszka remains in the valley, cleansing damaged places tree by tree. The Dragon eventually returns to his tower and to Agnieszka, accepting that their shared work and attachment will continue on less orderly terms than he once imagined.