Lisaykos, Healing Shrine of Mugash

It was half-past the third bell when a cleanshaven and less fatigued Irhessa leaned up against the doorjamb of my study door. "You put a charm of sleep on me," he accused with a smile.

"A certain granddaughter insisted you get some sleep." I looked at the schedule that Wolkayrs wrote out for me this morning. "You should visit your sister for a few days. I have Fed at end of the rotation and we were going to go to Manse Gunndit for the first growing day festival. How about inviting Oyyuth down with the rest of the children and we can make a day of it?"

"I'm the only one in the family with a mount," he said with regret.

"Alright, we could spend the festival at your house in Is'syal. Katsa and her family could come to visit you. You know she wants to, as do your nephews. And we could kidnap Twevyar from Yant. We won't have problems with mounts that way."

"Hmmm." He frowned and thought too long about it.

"It was just a suggestion," I remarked casually. "Otherwise, I will kidnap my granddaughter, the one who lives here and not in Yant, and will be at Manse Gunndit in a few days."

"I will discuss it with Oyyuth," he said. "I will pass on seeing Katsa on this trip. I need to talk with Emily as soon as possible."

"Is there some other reason besides your overwhelming need to overwork yourself like the rest of my family?"

"Yes, there is." He grimaced and stood in my doorway with his arms folded, glaring at the floor. Finally, he finished whatever debate he was having with himself. "Mother, is there a charm called the charm of tongues for understanding another language?"

"It's one of the lost charms," I said. "There's documentation on those in the vault at the Shrine of Galt. I'm sure Kamagishi would let you in to inspect the manuscripts, given who you are. What does this have to do with Emily?"

He looked at me from across the room with a worried face, "I had another dream command, from Vassu this time, to learn the charm of tongues, which I had never heard of before but I'm not a scholar of the charms by any measure."

"Go see Kamagishi," I advised, "tell her I sent you if she gives you any grief."

"What's a divine?" he asked. "Everyone keeps talking about them but I have no idea what one is. Are they a new fad or something?"

"I think all I need to say on that subject is," I made him wait for it, "Emily!"

"Emily? Gods, it's an Emily thing? But what it is?"

"It's a musical instrument that has a soundbox but it's plucked, not bowed," I explained. "Mugash told Emily she needed to have one."

"Amazing," he said more to himself than to me. "Do you ever get the feeling the world might be changing too fast?"

I had a good laugh over that rhetorical question.

---

Hessakos, Building Shrine of Giltak

"Hello, Priestess Kayseo," I walked into the guest house with the Holy Raoleer in tow. "Is my favorite little wolverine in?"

"Wolverine? Why a wolverine? I've always thought she was more like a little traveling thunderstorm." Kayseo put down the manuscript she was reading.

"I don't know if Thuorfosi ever told you, but Emily saved my life in the middle of the kidnapping incident. I remember lying on the riverbank, helpless to save myself, and she deliberately put herself between me and my attacker. Then she attacked, like this extremely-fierce tiny wolverine, nose and whiskers twitching, all bunched up and bristling and ready-to-bite. She knocked my attacker off her eagle using a sling she improvised by ripping a strip of fabric off her nightgown. She's been a wolverine in my head ever since."

"My Emily?" Kayseo looked like she didn't believe a word I said. "A thunderstorm or a whirlwind, maybe. But a wolverine? No, I don't think so." She picked her manuscript back up. "She's in her room trying to understand musical notation."

I walked over to the indicated door and knocked. I didn't hear anything so I cracked the door open to see Emily asleep, divine leaned up against the wall, and music all over the floor. I didn't want to wake her up but I did want to see my wife and kids before dark. So I went in and took out a little paper package with liver paté on bread chips that Wolkayrs had given to me. It was a clever package. The paper had been waxed so the food didn't penetrate through to stain clothes.

I took a chip full of liver paté and put it close enough to her nose so she would smell it. Her eyes popped open and focused on the food. She looked at me and then opened her mouth. She pointed at the paté and then at her open mouth. It made me laugh.

"It's yours if you sit up and eat it like a civilized person, Great One," I said.

"W...What? Civilized?" she grumbled in her soft voice. "Forget it, then. I have no intent to be civilized." She sat up anyway and I gave her the paté. She's an addict.

"I hope you've managed to put on some weight," I said, sitting on the floor in front of her perch on the bed. She looked annoyed at the reminder.

"Alright, down to business," I told her. "I have found the Queen. I got a dream command from Vassu that you are needed to get the Queen to come home. That's the first bit. The second is that I need to learn one of the lost charms, called the charm of tongues. It lets you understand things in another language."

"Where is Aylem and why didn't she come home w...with you?" Emily asked.

"She's on the coast of the Fenland, a hard place to reach, no matter which one of the three routes you take. She has lost her memory. I did not speak with her directly. She's staying with an old friend of mine who is protecting her for now. So she's safe but inaccessible."

"Emotional trauma-induced amnesia," Emily considered. "I can see that happening. What she endured w...within her own mind could have caused her to flee from the reality of what she had done. That kind of memory loss is usually temporary. When are w...we leaving for the coast?"

"I wanted to see my wife and children first and my mother tempted me with spending the holiday at Manse Gunndit. I think the second is impractical but I do want to see my family in Is'syal."

"What's wrong w...with going to Gunndit?" Emily wondered.

"I'm the only one with a mount." Emily gave me the weirdest look when I said that and Raoleer out in the common room laughed.

"He's not too sharp, is he?" Priestess Kayseo remarked from the common room.

"Especially when it's staring him in the face," the Holy Raoleer replied.

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I raised my voice a little: "So enlighten me!" The two women just laughed some more.

Emily gave me a sad disappointed look, "Hessakos, you forgot that Asgotl w...would likely say yes to helping you out, and I should probably go with you since that will save some time in going to wherever we're going. There's the additional benefit that you'd get an additional seat on a mount because I'm sure Kayseo w...will tag along until I return to Aybhas or leave with you."

"So you're done here for now," the Holy Raoleer said to Emily from the door, where she was now standing. "The folks at the foundry will miss you, and you will miss the first firing of the blast furnace."

"I've already been here too long, Holy One," Emily sighed.

"You could move here, Great One," Raoleer suggested. "Aduda, Boi, and Koifu already offered to build you a house in the east canyon."

"They're nice kids," Emily said with that thinking look of hers on her face.

"Aduda is sweet on you," Raoleer remarked, smiling with her eyes. "You know that, don't you?"

"I know," Emily said with a touch of sadness. This was turning into a very interesting conversation.

"What? You're not interested?" Raoleer raised an eyebrow.

"It's not that," Emily bit her lip. "I'm just not ready for any romance," Emily suddenly looked up at Raoleer with accusation in her eyes, "and you are overly fond of playing matchmaker."

The Holy Raoleer laughed, "probably."

"Kayseo, w...We need to pack," Emily called out to the common room, "if we're trying to get to Is'syal before dark."

"Already on it," Kayseo called out from her room.

Emily was staring off into space again with that thinking look back on her face. I was getting an itchy feeling in the back of my head that something interesting was about to erupt.

"Holy One, what happens if you use a charm of w...warmth on air?" Emily looked at Raoleer leaning on the doorframe.

"It gets warm or hot, depending on the amount of magic applied, and it will rise or move away depending on where you are and whether you've used a barrier charm to keep it in one place. Warmth on air is not usually used without some way to constrain the air from moving elsewhere. Why?"

"Remember the problem of routing pre-heated blast through the bellows?"

Raoleer eyes opened wide, "Oh!"

"Yeah, have someone use magic to preheat the blast instead of wasting charcoal. Might get better temperature control as w...well as the ability to experiment with finding an optimal temperature for preheating."

"Oh, I like this," the High Priestess pulled out her pocket tablet and made a note, "and it's moments like this that convince me that you really need to move here Great One."

"Good try, Holy One, but I'm not moving, at least for now."

"Huhoti won't forgive either of us if I let you leave without her saying goodbye. She's become quite fond of you, you know." Raoleer closed her eyes for a moment, "there, she's coming now."

"Yes, I believe I'm going to miss Huhoti," Emily said. "She thinks about metals and chemicals the same way I do and I never thought I'd meet anyone like that here. She made the world a lot less lonely for me."

Kayseo came in with empty saddlebags for Emily's clothes and tools, "too bad it took the Holy Raoleer to pry the two of your apart after dinner every night so you would go to bed on time."

"We were not that bad," Emily protested.

"Oh yes, you were," the Holy Raoleer shook her head.

---

Emily, at the Fated Shrine of Galt

"You did it!" Asgotl did that little prancy dance he does with his talons and feet when he's really happy. "All the way to the library doors!"

I had just walked from Hessakos' and Oyyuth's house to the library doors at the Shrine of Galt. It was a short walk but I was winded and my back hurt for some strange reason.

Passers-by kept giving us strange looks. It probably did look strange. It's not often a griffin escorts a Coyn on a walk through city streets. Asgotl is big for a griffin too and I'm short for a Coyn. We must have been quite the sight.

"Ow," I staggered and leaned against the wall of the library portico, "I could use a chair right now."

“Did you overdo? I told you to ride on my back, twice!" Asgotl grabbed the bell pull with his beak and pulled it. After only a breath or two, the door opened and a Priestess Librarian looked out, then up at Asgotl and down at me."

"Hello," I managed to say. "I'm..."

"Priestess Kayseo," the librarian called out, "she's here." While she waited for my keeper, she got down on her knees, "may the blessings of the eleven gods be upon you, Great One."

"And w...with you also," I replied, "please rise." It still rattled me to see these big Cosm do kneeling obeisances to me.

"You should have stopped to rest on your way here," Kayseo appeared in the doorway, arms crossed, glaring down at me from a formidable height. She had grown so much in the last year.

"She did," Asgotl said, "twice. I told her just to get on my back both times but she's being dense today."

"Oh?" Kayseo had a dangerous look on her face.

"Traitor," I smacked Asgotl's knee.

"Hmm, I think there's a bug on my knee," Asgotl said to Kayseo.

"I'll take care of it for you," Kayseo leaned down and picked me up under the arms and then held me up so she was looking me in the eyes. "Next time, take him up on the ride, Great Bug. You are infuriatingly stubborn."

"Yeah, Great Bug, what Kayseo said," Asgotl humphed at me. "I'm off. See you in a bit, Kayseo." The librarian closed the door with an amused smile on her face.

"Alright, too dense to follow directions from your healer, grab my collar with your right hand," she shifted me to sit on her left arm. "The others are waiting for you."

"They are?"

"The high priestess had a premonition earlier this morning," Kayseo turned down a hallway, "so she and Lord Irhessa are waiting for you to show up so we can all go down to the vault together."

"Ah."

When she got to the door into Kamagishi's study, the door opened of its own accord and then shut itself behind us.

"Dear heart," Hessakos didn't nag. He had a way of saying things that left one sinking in the feeling of having let him down horribly. He was an expert with guilt. "If you wanted to come, you should have just waited for me to take you with me."

"Needed to w...walk," I said. I might have pouted just a little.

"I know it seems too slow, but you are getting better," he said. "You need to give it more time."

"Hello, Great One," Kamagishi stood up from her chair and did a bowing obeisance. "How are you today, besides too stubborn for your own good, Great Bug?"

"Not y...you too," I protested. She rolled her eyes at me.

"Well, shall we?" Kamagishi took a ring of keys from a drawer in her work table and opened a door on the back wall of her office. It revealed a spiral staircase built into the stone wall of the shrine. Hessakos and Kayseo followed Kamagishi down.

"Aren't y...you going to put me down, Kayseo?" I asked, surprised that she was coming too.

"No, I am not going to put you down," her lips were set firmly. "You have overdone it again and you are not walking anywhere for the next two days. And these are old steps that were made for silverhairs. Given your current state, you would likely trip and fall again like you did three rotations ago in Omexkel."

I sighed. I knew I wasn't going to win this. Kayseo would immobilize me if I was too stubborn like she had done in Omexkel twice.

We went down a long way, deeper than I anticipated. We finally came to a landing. "We call this the vault," Kanagishi said, unlocking the door. "It is actually the original Well of Galt surrounded by the original library stacks. It is more than thirty-five hundred years old. It used to be just below street level, which tells you how the city has been built up around the shrine.

The charm gem lights hanging from huge lamp fixtures came to life. We were standing on a circular mezzanine with doors spaced around the perimeter. Four equally spaced sets of steps of white and red marble went down into a circular depression. In the center of it was a giant sherry-colored topaz crystal, taller than I was. It was magnificent, set on a tall stand of the same variegated red and white marble that lined the Well.

Something in my peripheral vision moved and I looked. It was a huge fluffy tuxedo cat. It would probably come up to my waist if I was standing up.

"How did a cat get down here?" I asked. My companions looked and then dropped to their knees and bowed their heads.

"Bow your head, Emily," Kayseo whispered urgently.

With that warning in my ears, I studied the cat who sauntered over leisurely and stopped in front of me. Kayseo was trembling which confused me until I realized what was going on. She was terrified of this cat.

(Continued in part 70)