Emily, Manse Truvos, Harvest, 7th rot., 1st through 5th days

I learned that while I was delirious and lost in the woods for a day, I missed the mayhem caused by Idits, the blond tin worker slave. He skipped his dinner to walk to the chapel shrine to check that I had arrived there safely. Idits was a well-respected Coyn in the Truvos community, just because he did look out for other people regardless if they were Cosm or Coyn or a flying mount. When he knocked on the chapel shrine door, the young healer on duty didn't know what to make of his tale, so she bothered her superior in charge of their little four-healer facility.

After confirming that no one matching my description had visited the chapel shrine, especially no one with a shrine mantle, the healer in charge kicked over a metaphorical beehive and visited the manse. She took Idits with her and asked for Lord Sopno's mother, the retired Revered Lyappis, who was home for a few days. She was currently relaxing with her family before retiring to her cottage overlooking Black Lake for the night, a short walk from Truvos Manse. Lyappis was well-known and well-liked by the healers of the local chapel shrine because of her habit of stopping by to chat and then staying, quite by accident she always protested, to help with the healing work.

After Lyappis had Idits describe the green overtunic I was wearing with Twessera's embroidered knotwork in red and yellow on the cuffs and the grey shrine mantle with the gold-thread sigil of Mugash, all hell broke loose. Lyappis recognized the overtunic as the one I was wearing on the day of the attack. Lord Sopno organized searches that evening and again during the day. A squall-line of thunderstorms rolled through during the night and the storms that followed were still dropping rain in the morning when Aylem arrived.

Aylem employed her phenomenal powers of clairvoyance, trying to locate me while Asgotl flew every path, road, river, and stream, looking for me from the air. Aylem and Asgotl both were frustrated and worried when Cadrees with Usruldes in his wraith suit and Lisaykos on Hekees arrived in the late afternoon.

Poor Aylem had to bear with Usruldes sitting down after dinner, extending his clairvoyance, and instantly finding me. He pointed out that he was trained by the kingdom's former spymaster at hyper-local clairvoyance, while Aylem could use the Great Crystal to watch armies move across continents and fleets across oceans. "It's not a matter of power, it's merely the consequence that we were trained differently," he explained.

"She's sitting on the porch of a Coyn social building about 120 paces from here, soaked to the skin, not in her right mind, singing a catchy song with strange words. I don't think anyone inside knew she was there because they just noticed her singing," said Usruldes, so I was told by his mother afterward.

"Not in her right mind?" Lisaykos asked.

"She appears to have a high fever but it's hard to tell because there are also signs she has been in contact with a god recently," Usruldes got up from his chair and walked to where his cloak was hanging to dry. "I will fetch her. I hope there is a healer available in-house because the fever looks to be trouble, and she is injured." That was his twisted sense of humor talking about whether there was a healer available. Then he sighed, "yes, there's nothing like a little dose of Emily to make life interesting."

Lisaykos followed him out the door and so did Aylem. Those poor folks at the social hall had the experience of watching the infamous Usruldes the Wraith, the Blessed Revelator Lisaykos, and the Queen of Foskos running up to the building. There was a group of Coyn already on the porch, debating whether to carry me to the manse or send to the manse for help.

I'm sure I do not have to explain how scary three silverhair Cosm can look to a group of Coyn when running directly toward them. More than half of them ran away from the fright. The rest had been part of the search parties looking for me so they knew the approaching Cosm were probably coming to get me.

It was one of those twists that I had already met the Coyn who found me on the porch. I had met him during the Battle of Tiki's Shrine. He was Py'oask, one of the managers of the Queen's Villa. He had delivered a load of beer and ale to Manse Truvos earlier in the afternoon, along with a Cosm colleague also from the Villa, who was staying on the Cosm side of town.

Py'oask was the one with the divine who sang at the social hall, I later learned. He had heard me singing on the porch when he finished a song and came out to investigate. He recognized me and started the discussion about what to do for me when the silverhair threesome arrived.

Py'oask, unfortunately, left Truvos before I ever woke up so I never did get the chance to say hello and talk with him. It was a shame because I was now intrigued that there were already other Coyn who were good enough to play the divine and lead others in singing, which is one of the major forms of entertainment for both human races.

As it was, the fever ran for another day before it broke. Aylem took care of my burnt and now-infected feet. She and Lisaykos took turns managing the fever, keeping it from taxing my system to the point of death of exhaustion or organ failure. Healers hate fevers because they can't be sped up safely as a means to get rid of them. Fevers can only be wrangled, prevented from going too high, or lasting too long. The feverish body is supplemented by the attending healer to imbue energy into an exhausted patient, kick the immune response into high gear, and speed up the body's production of the appropriate antibodies.

Despite the prevalence of microscopic parasites, bacteria, and viruses, Foskos society doesn't suffer from epidemics in general. Because infections and fevers are difficult to manage, every charm gem in Foskos has spent time in the Well of Mugash. The influence of the Healing Crystal is to imbue charm gems with the ability to prevent infectious diseases. All legally-traded crystals in Foskos first spend two rotations in the Well of Mugash before being traded to another shrine to be cut into smaller gems. It was one of the reasons the Well of Mugash was always locked.

The pervasiveness of charm gems in Foskos is what prevented epidemics. Every charm gem carried the default property of preventing infectious diseases, including all the charm gems for light, slave control, compulsion on prisoners, location, reunion, leveling, magical focus, and magical range. The irony is that as a masterless Coyn, I had no control charm gem embedded in my hand to protect me from a wound infection.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

I realized another foul-tasting truth while I was recovering from the wound fever: the control gems at the illegal breeding farm where I spent my early years had no infection protection in them. They must have been obtained on the black market, bought from the pirates of Mattamesscontess, or gotten from somewhere like Impotu. As illicit charm gems, they had never passed through the Well of Mugash. Had the breeding farm been legal, the fever and bunkhouse fire that had killed my earliest companions in this world would never have happened. That realization sat on the back burner of my anger and cooked slowly.

When I woke up, Usruldes, Aylem, and Lisaykos were gone. Lyappis told me she ran them off for being over-protective. Though I was overjoyed to see her alive and well after the Impotuan attack on the Healing Shrine, Lyappis was one scary old lady. Even if she were a Coyn, I would steer a careful course around her – that's how scary she was. She looked like any friendly old lady and even talked like one. Then she would throw off these outrageous one-liners.

For example, she mentioned that Usruldes found me, and Aylem and Lisaykos took care of most of the healing for the feet and the wound fever. I couldn't believe they left so Lyappis replied: "Oh, those three are just too over-protective as if you couldn't shovel soup with a spoon into your own mouth without help. So I threw them out. The Revered Huhoti is coming tomorrow with something to keep you distracted while you get your strength back after that nasty fever. I expect I'll be taking you home to Aybhas in a few days."

The idea of just throwing out a high priestess and revelator, a queen, and the kingdom's spymaster was one I couldn't even wrap my brain around. I didn't know where she got the idea to contact the Building Shrine, but I was looking forward to seeing Huhoti and getting an update on rubber. Lyappis was also deliberately vague about what Huhoti was bringing to distract me. I accused her of this and she just smiled sweetly at me, and said, "yes." From that stance, she would not be moved. Yes, she was a very scary old lady. I can see why Lisaykos considered her up to the task of handling our problem child Aylem.

The scary Lyappis also proved to be observant. From the two rotations when she quietly watched me at the Healing Shrine, she knew what I liked to eat and what I loved to eat. It was all on the menu, even the nips. What was missing were the twice-cooked camas lily bulbs, with the crunchy caramelized outside and the sweetish yam-like taste on the inside. I didn't know how late in the year it was so I didn't know if the bulbs had been harvested completely.

It turned out to be the seventh rotation of the harvest season, which shocked me since the amount of time I spent with Galt was more like a rotation from my perspective. An entire season had passed. The harvest of purple wet weed bulbs was complete and the bulk was going into storage for food relief during the cold season.

Before all of it got stored, I talked Lyappis and Lord Sopno into letting me instruct their cooks on how to first slow roast the bulbs overnight in a greased cauldron on a banked cooking fire and then hot-fried in butter or oil once the sweetness had come up. It was delicious when served lightly buttered with salt and none of the ground gypsum that Cosm like to put on their food.

I spent the next three days in bed. That was how long it took me to recover, as gauged by enough strength to walk up and down the long upstairs hallway of the manse five times without needing to rest for a bell afterward. Old-fashioned fevers in a world without antibiotics are brutal.

The first night after I regained consciousness, I dreamed again about making acids without electrolysis. That disturbed me because electrolysis is the work horse of chemical engineering.

"Giltak, I don't understand why. There is so much that one can make with an electrolysis tank, a few basic electrodes and a knowledge of half-cell reactions. Making a simple direct current generator and building a tank are easy tasks. I've already done it. So why backtrack and drill into me a more primitive method of making acids? This makes no sense to me."

Giltak was lazing around the lecture hall in a pale purple lab coat and wire-rimmed glasses. There was even a circular slide rule in the lab coat pocket. Taking the chalk back up, the god of fire and craft ignored my protest, "make sure you build a good still, because you will need it to purify the nitric acid."

Making acids out of vitriol and perchlorates out of salt solutions is so easy compared to the older wet chemistry reactions. What was going to happen to me where I would need to make acids without electrolysis?

"Giltak, where are you and your chums sending me that I won't be able to make a generator and electrolysis tank? It's much easier for me to find any of the vitriols than it is to find saltpeter," I protested.

"Now, that would spoil the surprise, Emily darling," Giltak grinned. "Have I warned you about the still? You'll need it for making ethanol too."

"What?!?" That was when I woke up, three nights in a row. I knew I was stuck because of it. By the time I woke up after the third repeated dream, I knew I would never forget what Giltak wanted me to remember: burn sulfur and saltpeter in lead to make sulfuric acid, then react sulfuric acid with saltpeter and distill the product to make nitric acid. I was left wondering why I would need those two acids. It bothered me.

The dreams weren't the only thing that bothered me. The bedroom the Cosm put me in belonged to Lord Sopno, who moved into a spare bedroom with his wife. If I had known that, I would have insisted on moving to a guest room or one of the Coyn guest cabins on the backside of the manse. I told Lyappis that and she said: "I know you would want to move, so that's why no one told you it was my son's bedroom." Lyappis confessed they decided to put me in the Lord's bedroom because it was the only one to have a shower and the set-up for flush toilets. They installed a toilet sized for Coyn while I was still in la-la land with the fever.

When Huhoti arrived, she came with several surprises, at both Lisaykos' and Lyappis' urging: rubber, plate glass, completed crutches with rubber pads, a Cosm-sized working prototype of a wheelchair with solid rubber tires on steel rims, and Kayseo in functional prosthetic legs to show off how well they worked.

Whoever was the mastermind behind this, and I suspected it was several people working together, I was indeed distracted. "My son's plumbing will be safe," Lyappis added. I had to protest that I was not anything like the rumors, especially if she got them from Foyuna. Apparently, Lisaykos and Aylem got the poor gal all scared that her shrine was in danger from my very rare excursions to examine how pipes were constructed.

"I'm really nothing like that," I defended myself which only caused Lyappis to laugh. She laughed too hard and too long if you ask me. I got the impression she didn't believe me, which left me feeling out of sorts. What good is being a prophet if no one takes you seriously?

With Kayseo around, I never even got bored, which was novel, but I had nine rotations of gossip to catch up on. In return, I told her about my travels with Vassu and Galt.

Kayseo is one of the biggest lovers of gossip I've met. No wonder she and Kamagishi get along so well. She hinted there was a change to my living quarters at the shrine but insisted on omitting the details about the change. That one thing caused me some surprise and trouble later on.