Emily, in Gunndit and Uldlip

The festival of the first day of growing season held on the land of Lisaykos' family was uncomfortable for me. A year ago, I was unaware of the festival because my eyes had been wrapped in bandages and I was confined to bed at the Shrine. This year, I sat in the solar of Manse Gunndit reading with Lisaykos for company. The first-day festival does not involve any Coyn. The festival grounds were filled with partying Cosm and were not safe for the smaller human race.

Several thousand of people lived on the haup Gunndit holding and several thousand more lived in the city of Gunndit. Lord Katsa had to officially initiate the festival in the city, which involved watching and blessing the parade through the city streets. Then she returned to her lands to do the same thing at the festival site, which was always in the parklands in front of the Manse. Usruldes told me that the few times Katsa was unavailable, Lisaykos, filled in for her since the high priestess was the marriage partner of the previous lord and a princess of the lesser degree in her own right.

The festival was in honor of Vassu in her aspect as the bringer of rain and river water for crops. This meant that water fights were part of the festivities. All the festival booths received charms of protection but anyone dry and walking through the festival grounds outside of the booths would soon be wet. Added to the nonsense, teenagers with magic would roam the lanes, drying people off at random. This was to ensure that the groups of children with glayon vines bloated with water would have ample targets. All water fights had to end at dusk but the partying did not.

I spent about a bell that afternoon playing around with a glayon vine, stretching it and snapping it and using it as a slingshot elastic to shoot wads of discarded paper. I tried shooting some wads of paper at Lisaykos, who was reading, but she just waved her finger in the air and they all reversed course to bombard me.

The off-white spongy interior of the vine reminded me of something but I couldn't put my finger on it, which annoyed me. "It doesn't stretch in the cold season," Lisaykos said at one point, not even looking up from the manuscript she was reading. "The vines get brittle in the cold and break into solid pieces." Then she cast a cold charm and my glayon vein broke into frozen pieces. She tried not to smirk and didn't succeed.

The next morning, Hessakos and I left for the fenland many wagon-days to the northwest. First, we stopped for the night at Uldlip. Hessakos had friends among the Sea Coyn and wanted to gather information, assuming he could cajole them into talking.

"It's not easy," he told me as we were getting ready to leave. "You must always have information to give in exchange. The Sea Coyn never give anything away for free. But we will be skirting Tirmaran territory and it's always better to see if they've been giving the Sea Coyn trouble before traveling north of Inkalim. We do not want to run into any Tirmarans. They are dangerous, even for me."

According to the histories I had read, the trade fair at Uldlip was about six centuries old. Its establishment was part of the treaty negotiation after Foskos lost a war of conquest against the Sea Coyn, which is something the ruling Cosm of Foskos seldom talked about. I asked Hessakos how a race of giant mages could lose to magicless Coyn. All he would say was: "guile, ambush, indirect attacks, superb archery with poisoned arrows and the willingness to die rather than be slaves, so the historical records say."

The trip to Uldlip took the same time as flying from Boston to New York, but without the huge hassles before and after landing with security checks and the nightmare of driving in Boston. Hessakos flew a strange pattern before he landed on a small rise south of where several hundred Sea Coyn were laying out the trading site. I had never been to Uldlip before the fair actually started so I found the activity interesting.

"Stay on Asgotl, Emily," Hessakos said. "It will help with showing up this early if they see a Coyn flying a griffin. Remember our cover stories. We're not here to trade, after all, but they don't know that yet. We're just traveling through. If my friend is here already, I just want to speak with her. One last thing, they call me Usruldes here, so remember to use that from here to the coast."

He dismounted from Cadrees and spread a small rug on the ground. Then he sat cross-legged on the ground with the rug in front of him. He placed a wineskin on the rug and two beakers small enough that a Coyn could pick one up with just one hand. Then we waited.

We didn't wait long. Five Sea Coyn approached, in their white floppy caps, billowing white capes and long white linen shirts covered with complicated and colorful knotwork embroidery. They were all brown-skinned, black-eyed, and black-haired with high broad cheekbone, strong chins, and prominent noses. A tall middle-aged woman led the party. The other four were two men and two women armed with crossbows, which were cocked and loaded.

They walked up the rise with confusion on their faces as they stared at me on Asgotl.

"I come with the words of my lips to greet you in friendship and with my water to share with the stranger," Hessakos touched his fingers to his lips and then held his hand out, making the gesture of welcome. "Please share my water with me, Danasma Camp Master. We come not to trade, for it is too early, but to speak with Ulamis Tuleen, whose standard is flying in the encampment. I am her friend, Usruldes."

"I greet you, Usruldes, and know of you," Danasma replied, all the while looking up at me on Asgotl's back. "Pardon me if this is rude, but you know Coyn in bondage are not allowed in Uldlip."

"I am a free Coyn, Danasma," and showed the backs of both my hands, "and I have traded here in Uldlip in the past: n...not last year, but the three years before that, w...with crystals for salt, rice, cloth and thread."

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Danasma's eyebrows rose when she recognized me: "You? You are the miner from the north. You are wearing cloth and have grown out your hair. How is it that you are with Usruldes Udkin? And I thought you were mute. You can talk? And how can you fly a griffin when no Coyn has magic?"

"She is my friend," Asgotl said, startling all five Sea Coyn who had never been spoken to before by a griffin. "I take her with me for friendship's sake. I am Asgotl and I am pleased to meet you, Danasma Camp Master."

"Unbelievable," Danasma's were as wide as eyes can go without popping out of one's head.

"I w...was mute," I said, "but I have been at the Healing shrine in Aybhas and have spent the last year regaining my voice, w...which I lost as a child after a head injury. This is possible because the King of Foskos is in my debt."

Danasma turned to a young woman in her escort, "Kimnel, find Ulamis Tuleen and tell her that Usruldes Udkin is here and wishes to exchange words with her." Danasma then seated herself on the rug and poured water into both beakers. Both she and Usruldes downed the water in one swallow.

"Welcome to Uldlip, Usruldes Udkin, and Miner of the North."

"I thank you, Danasma," Usruldes put his hands together against his forehead like he was praying and bowed to her. "Was the trip from Tuleen uneventful this year?"

"No, it was difficult in two places where floodwaters cut new channels in the river. We dispatched workers to clear the channel even before the snow melted in the passes. There was a terrible storm at the very beginning of harvest last year that came up from the south and wiped out two entire fishing fleets and the towns that sustained them. Thousands of people died. Did you suffer the same?"

"We suffered a storm at the same time," Usruldes said. "There were terrible floods along the Upper Salt and Rig Rivers. Half the town of Two Ferry Island and its inhabitants were lost. All of Queenstown was underwater but the Shrine of Tiki was above the water and took in the townspeople and farmers who made it before the water became too high. We lost almost all of the small grains north of Queenstown. It has been a hard year."

"How hard was the famine?" she asked. "We have the ocean to rely on but Foskos does not."

"This one here showed the high priestess of Mueb that the bulbs of purple wet weed were edible if cooked," he pointed at me. "So we were able to harvest enough before the snows came. While rations were lean in a few places, no one starved over the cold season. Still, the loss of life in the flood was horrible. They found several new bodies every day at the beginning of planting where the river spreads out before Black Falls."

"So we both have had losses," she sighed.

"There will be fewer sheepskins this year coming out of Fosk," Usruldes said. "We lost a lot of flocks. We should have a full inventory of everything else. There will be some traders from Aybhas with a new thing called paper to show around. It is a less expensive writing surface than vellum and parchment."

"I have heard rumor of this paper," Danasma said. "Look, there is Ulamis." She waved. A woman walking up the rise waved back. She was short and stocky and her hair was turning grey. She reached the top of the rise, looked at Danasma and Usruldes, and then looked up at me.

"I do not think I would have ever believed this had I not seen it with my own eyes," Ulamis said in a rasping alto. "How do I know that you haven't staged this, Usruldes, you old criminal? It can't be hard to just pop a Coyn on a sitting griffin."

"Asgotl," I smacked our new hand signal for stall turn, "let's buzz the camp."

"That sounds like fun." Asgotl took one bound down and leaped into the flying, which is a difficult maneuver and falls into the showing-off category. I looked down to see Usruldes pinching his nose and shaking his head.

Asgotl poured tremendous effort into climbing as fast and as high as he could. Then he pointed his nose straight up, tucked his wings in, and flew into the stall. For just a heartbeat, we hung motionless in the air and my stomach discovered butterflies because I feared we might go over backwards. Then Asgotl shouted, "here we go, Emily, Hold on tight!"

I felt the sway as he kicked the fall-off with his tail and hips, and then we were dropping nose down, the speed picking up. I had to wrap my hands around Asgotl's neck strap to stay leaning forward. He leveled off right at the level of the encampment's standards. I have no idea how fast we were going, but it was fast enough that tears were streaming from my eyes.

"Woohoo! That was great!" Asgotl was exuberant as we landed very sedately.

"You think you're an eagle or something, four foot?" Cadrees bumped beaks with Asgotl.

"Knock it off, you two," I told them. "I w...want to get down now and don't want to get stepped on." Asgotl laid down so I could slide down the neck strap easily.

"That is so much fun there is probably a law against it," I joined the three already sitting on the ground around the little rug.

"I greet you, Miner of the North, Ulamis made the hand to lips gestured.

"And I greet you also, Ulamis of T...tuleen," I repeated the gesture.

"So you really can talk now," Ulamis remarked.

"Have we traded before?" I didn't remember ever speaking with her.

"You have traded at my tent with my nephew," she explained.

"That would explain it," I smiled.

"I'm looking to swap news, Ulamis," Usruldes said.

"What sort of news?"

"Have you heard of anything out of the Tirmara tribes?"

"They are having some kind of internal war right now. Maybe everyone will get lucky and they'll kill themselves off up there and make the rest of our lives easier," Ulamis said.

"I received a report of a griffin tribe that moved in the area close to where the Copper River flows into the Fens," Usruldes said. "Have you heard anything about who they are and where they moved in from?"

"First I heard of it," Ulamis said. "Are you sure it's a good report?"

"I'm the one who found them," Asgotl said from above, startling the Sea Coyn. "They chased my butt all the way from the Copper River, across the Fens, and down to the coast. I'm sure it's a good report."

"Yes, I do believe the report is good," Usruldes said with a straight face. He's as bad as that griffin.

(Continued in part 72)