Emily, the White Shrine of Landa

The white phosphorus balls were effective, too effective for my taste. Starting with the fourth phosphorus ball, instead of throwing them, Fassex guided them with telekinesis into the vanguard and broke the glass explosively over the heads of the battle mages, spreading the phosphorus across many ranks of soldiers with each exploded ball. I don't know how many died from the burns. I don't think I want to.

Fassex used up one basket of the balls before the few hundred left alive fled from the shrine gates. The surviving soldiers attempted to put the fire out on those poor souls who were splattered with the phosphorus. I made the mistake of looking over the parapet at the victims of my evil idea and was promptly sick with dry heaves because I had nothing in my stomach. The balls of instant fire, as Fassex named them, were a very effective and gruesome weapon, and my stomach agreed. War sucks.

The remaining soldiers inside the city surrendered when they realized that the rest of the army had been destroyed by Aylem. Caught between the Deus ex machina of Aylem and my balls of fire, they lost all will to fight. Fassex sent out a group of 20 adepts who worked their way through the Impotuan soldiers casting some kind of magic on them to make them easily manageable.

The adepts on the roof carefully removed the baskets off of Asgotl's saddle and left them on the roof for now. Sitting on the roof and leaning against Asgotl's upper foreleg, I advised Fassex that the baskets had charms cast on them to protect the glass balls from accidental jostling but told her they should be stored in a cool place somewhere far from combustible materials.

"You don't know much about magic, do you, Great One?" she smiled at me kindly.

"Other than cleaning and healing magic, I'm mostly ignorant, Holy One."

"I will make sure the baskets will be safe here on the roof," she took out her crystal and cast some charms. "The masonry cladding of the roof and dome isn't combustible. I just cast a barrier around the baskets that no one weaker than myself can break and also a charm of cold to keep them at a temperature of a cool day during the harvest. Is that good enough by your estimation, since you know the nature of the instant fire better than anyone else?"

"Holy One, that is perfect. Thank you."

"You look fatigued," Fassex got down on her knees next to me, the first time she had ever done so for me. "I fear all we have prepared for food is soup. I will have some brought to your room. I am wondering if I should allow you to walk to the room I've had prepared for you or if I should carry you. You do not look well."

"I do not feel very good right now and I don't believe I will be able to stomach food for a little while longer. Please, just leave me some water or fruit juice if you have any to spare. If it's a long walk or there are Cosm-scaled steps between here and where I need to go, it would be better if you carry me."

"About time you used some sense," Asgotl sniffed and bumped my shoulder with the tip of his beak.

"Yeth dear," I lisped in annoyance at him.

Fassex carried me to a guest room on the top floor of the shrine with a priestess adept following us with my backpack of clothes and sundries and my guitar. Some smart person had spread a rug on the stone floor and placed just a mattress on it. I could use it as a bed without help to get on or off. It was made up and everything. There were several extra-large floor cushions for Cosm to side on. There was even a Coyn-scaled pitcher of water and some Coyn-sized beakers. There was a basin to use if I got sick to my stomach some more.

I later found out there were Coyn quarters in the Shrine of Landa but Fassex thought the guest quarters down the hall from where she had her quarters were more fitting for someone of my station. I guess she couldn't deal with my sleeping in a room next to the enslaved Coyn domestic staff. Well, that's Fassex for you: the woman must have every person in Foskos firmly pinned to their place in the kingdom hierarchy, right down to the lowliest slave who collects the chamber pots out of the necessaries every morning.

While I took a nap, the priestesses and priests of the shrine had difficulties with the clean-up after the phosphorus bombs. They put out all the fires in the paved city square in from of the shrine, but every time they tried to extinguish the burning phosphorus, the stuff would just burst back into flame. I wish I could have seen all those overgrown Cosm mages trying to extinguish burning phosphorus without a clue to its chemistry.

I did tell Fassex to use water if anyone had phosphorus splashed on them, but she didn't extrapolate that to phosphorus splashed into the crevices between street paving or on grass or the massive wood doors of the shrine. They had a horrible time with getting the fire out from the phosphorus that had eaten into the ancient wood of those doors.

The aftermath of the conflict at the gate left me feeling very off. After I woke from my nap and turned down food, I discovered that Aylem was in the room next to me in a completely helpless state. No one bothered to tell me that this charm of ultimate defense puts its user into a dangerous state of exhaustion, depending on how many people are killed by its application. It also robs the user of all magic for two or more days. That's quite a price to pay just to use one charm. It also solidified my thoughts about physical relationships of magical energy.

The only person in the world that can use this charm is the Queen. Only the queen can learn it and use it if it is needed. Aylem's use of it was the fourth time it was ever employed in the more than four millennia history of Foskos. The charm is quite neat and clean. The Queen can cast it on whoever she wants and they just fade to nothingness, leaving their clothes and other physical possessions behind, sort of like a neutron bomb but without the bodies to clean up afterward.

There were now around 19,000 piles of clothes, armor, and weapons from the north gate of Yant stretching back for a distance of half a wagon-day. There was also a whole mule-powered wagon train of supplies. By law, it was now the property of the Queen.

All the doors at the Shrine of Landa had foot latches so I let myself out of my room. In my bare feet and a clean undertunic, I knocked on Aylem's door. A priestess in the purple working gown of the shrine opened the door and looked out, right over my head. Then she looked down and promptly got to her knees, "May the blessings of the eleven gods be upon you, Great One."

I knew it would do me no good to pound my head against the wall in consternation, so I merely grimaced at the sight of this towering silverhair doing a full obeisance at me and attempted to accept it with as much grace as I could muster. "And also upon y...you, adept. Please get up."

"The Holy One thought you might be stopping in to visit," said the priestess who looked about twenty. I noticed that she had lovely green eyes. When almost everybody in a shrine had white hair, things like uncommon eye color stood out.

"Would you like a chair or would you prefer to sit on the bed?" the priestess adept asked.

"What w...would be easier on you, Aylem?" I called up to Aylem on the Cosm-sized bed.

"On the bed, dear heart," a weary Aylem voice said. "I won't have to turn my head as much."

I looked up the priestess, "please?"

"Certainly, Great One," she picked me as gently as Lisaykos and placed me on the mattress. She also provided me an arm to hold on to for balance as I sat down crosslegged.

"Thank you," I smiled up at her.

She looked slightly surprised by the thanks, and then made a shy smile, "you are most welcome."

She picked up her chair and book. "I will leave you two to talk. Use the bell if you need me, Great One." She left the door ajar so she could hear if Aylem wanted help.

"I like your hair braided," I studied Aylem. "It looks good on y...you; it makes your face l...look a few years younger." Aylem looked tired, which was not common for her since she is usually so energetic. She was sitting up with a pile of pillows behind her. The blankets and a poofy comforter turned her into a big lump under the covers.

"Do you have enough blankets, Aylem?" I teased her a little.

"Maybe," she said softly. "I actually feel a bit cold, which is not something I've felt since I was a little girl. I can barely move right now. You might enjoy the sight of me being stuck in bed and needing help to eat because I can't manage to hold a spoon up."

"Nope, not me," I replied, wondering where she might have gotten the idea that I enjoyed other people suffering. "I've never been a fan of Schaden...freude."

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"Schaden what?" She didn't know the word.

"Schadenfreude, it's a German w...word that had crossed over into English usage by my day. It translates as the joy one gets from the suffering of others. Schaden is one of the German words for harm or hurt, and Freude is joy. Leave it to the German language to have a w...word for such a thing."

"It's not fun, being so exhausted that y...you need that much help," I sympathized. "It's not easy to bear feeling like that w...with much grace. I hope you're not in pain at all?"

"No, but I can barely move," she replied. "I don't think I've ever felt this way. I can feel what I think of as the channels through which my magic moves and it's like there are a few drops of magic but not the tremendous reserves of power I always have at hand. I do not think I have ever run out of magic this way. It's weird, but I feel like an empty bathtub." She chuckled.

"So, as the magic returns, wh...where does it come from? Is it from outside the Aylem personal magical system or does it come from something w...within you? If you sleep X amount, then does Y amount of magic recharge proportionally? Are there certain foods y...you can eat that enable magic to return faster or be stored more effectively or to get cast more efficiently?"

Aylem was surprised by my questions. "What brought this on? Why are you so interested in magic all of a sudden, especially since you don't have any and never will?"

"Oh!" I realized I forgot to tell her about Galt. "You can blame Galt for this. W...when I was in the vault at his shrine, he told me he w...wanted me to figure out what magic w...was and create a theory for it. Now it's stuck in my brain. So I figured the first thing to quantify, if possible, w...would be the relationship is between size and magic, or better yet, between size and the three types of magic if indeed they are different. The other thing that needs to be solved is w...whether..."

There was a light knock and then Fassex strolled in. She dressed just like the young priestess looking after Aylem: in a simple workaday kirtle under an everyday purple gown. She had her hair up in a bandana-like headcloth.

"Great Ones, may I intrude?" She did a bowing obeisance.

"You are always welcome, Holy One," Aylem said.

"Oh, so formal this evening," Fassex smiled at Aylem as she pulled up a chair and sat.

"I do not know where I stand anymore," Aylem said with doubt in her voice, "so I thought it best to err with the most polite address."

Fassex looked a bit sad, "Aylem, dear, I have regretted the words I spoke to you in anger the night that...," she paused and looked at me with uncertainty.

"Holy One, I died that night and I know I died. I don't see w...why someone knowledgable like you can't talk about it, given your position." I figured she didn't know me well enough to know how mellow I was about such matters. After all, dying this time was instant and I had some fun while recuperating, thanks to those gods who chatted with me and took my soul drinking at Trader Vic's.

She studied me for a moment and then nodded. "Aylem, I regret what I said to you in anger that night. I was upset and I wasn't thinking quite rationally. Part of it was grief, I think, for the lost little girl I once lived with who was struggling with a power she had no experience controlling. I know we have had differences of opinion over the years, but that has never diminished the affection I have always had for you."

Honest-to-Pete, this iron-spined old lady was tearing up. Was she one of the adepts from Landa who raised Alyem when she was a little girl with too much magic?

Aylem was crying too. Yep, these two had a relationship that I did not know about.

"Thank you, Fassex," Aylem said softly. I wondered if I should sneak out of the room and leave the two of them alone to talk.

"When this invasion is over, we should sit down together with Lisaykos and talk about what to do with this bad temper of yours, child. You are too old and too important to be crippled by an anger problem." Fassex sighed. "It's something we should have taken care of earlier than this, but it was hard getting you to listen to anyone, dear heart. Even Lisaykos was wary to bring this up with you. I'm sorry it took an incident this extreme for you to acknowledge that you have a problem."

Aylem grimaced at the appraisal and nodded in agreement.

"Good," Fassex patted Aylem on the shoulder. "And you, young lady," she turned to me, "were saying something fascinating as I was opening the door."

"Just speculating," I shrugged.

"So Galt asked you to determine the nature of magic?" Fassex's eyes were shining with interest. "Why you? Why not someone with magic?"

"Galt said that because I had no magic, I w...would be able to see magic for what it really was," I explained. "So I've asked myself, what is it I have besides a lack of magic, that w...would make me a good person to solve this question? I think the answer is that I look at the w...world as a physical system defined by a universal set of laws governing time, space, energy, and mass that can be determined by observation and experimentation. This hints that there are physical laws that apply to magic. So it should be possible to determine what they are."

"This is fascinating," Fassex remarked, "but doesn't magic also depend on the inborn talent of the mage?"

"Let me counter with another question. Is magic stored in the body or is magic a force or type of energy that uses the body as a conduit? If we use Aylem's description of just a moment ago, it appears that something is stored w...which Aylem called magic and that it moved along wh...what she thought as channels. Now given the description, it suggests that there is a storage component w...which is proportional to the mass of the magic user. That's a good place to start, I think. The trick w...will be figuring out how to measure it. So Fassex, how is the magic potential of a magic user measured? How does a shrine evaluate the magic potential of a trainee or fully-grown mage? Can I talk to your people who test the magical ability of children who w...wish to study here?"

Fassex looked a little overwhelmed with my little introduction to the subject. Aylem chuckled, "Fassex, get used to this. Emily is like this all the time. She never stops thinking about things. One of the priestesses down in Aybhas said it was like living with a small whirlwind underfoot."

"Interesting," Fassex said, studying me, which was a bit uncomfortable given how much magic the old bird had to be packing.

"W...what are the tests y...you use to measure magic?"

"I'm not sure we measure anything, not at least in the meaning you give to the word measure. To test a candidate for adept training, we ask the child or person in question to move a heavy object with magic alone, to read a thought that isn't mindcast from someone nearby, to see an object placed in a dark closet, and to predict which one of three doors will open."

"How do y...you prevent someone w...who is just guessing from getting the right answer through luck?" I wanted to know.

"The prediction is one test we repeat thirty times, which eliminates those who get lucky with guesses. It also sorts out those really good at precognition from those just minorly inclined to that skill. Precognition is a hard skill to measure and to train. Let's see, we also ask a candidate to heal a small wound, make light without a crystal, and cast a charm of warmth or cold. What am I missing, Aylem? I know there's something else." Fassex frowned.

"Putting someone to sleep and robbing someone of voluntary motion," Aylem rattled off.

"That's right," Fassex nodded. "It's been a few decades since I had to test any candidates," she explained.

"Hmmm," I pondered the list of tests. I had to wonder how they differed between the various shrines, if they tested for the same skill sets or if they concentrated on the ones best for their own shrine's set of skills. If I looked at most of the tests together, there were changes of state, changes in energy, and transfers of energy; however, how did precognition fit?

I found myself wanting to quiz Kamagishi since her precognition was strong. The problem was the element of time. Clairvoyance was sensing a physical manifestation at a distance or not visible to the eye. So was precognition a clairvoyance effect plus a time translation? This might bear some thinking since, as Galt pointed out, time was orthogonal, which opened up a whole new window of potential explanations.

"She's got her thinking face on," Aylem said to Fassex. "From the look on your face, I can tell you're picking some of it up."

"The Blessed Emily is such a clear thinker when she's in that state, but I don't understand more than half of what she's thinking about time," Fassex said.

"W...w...what?" I came up from my train of thought.

"You know," Aylem said, "I have to wonder if your deep thinking episodes are a form of trance, Em."

"Oh, that could explain a lot," Fassex replied with her eyes lit up. "Her thinking just now was so much clearer than regular everyday thought. I'll have to give this some consideration. This could be an interesting line of inquiry about trances. Do you have some time tomorrow, Great One?"

"My n...name is Emily, n...not Great One."

"But that is not respectful or proper, especially since..."

"Respect is earned, not given, and I am not proper in the least, nor d...do I care about it much," I gave her my best managerial, no-you-can't-have-a-raise, cold icy stare. "The n...name is Emily. I'm sure y...you can w...wrap your tongue around it." I was feeling quite annoyed. Damn stiff-necked old schoolmarm.

Fassex tried looking grim and stubborn, somewhat miffed with a taint of anger, followed by indignance. It was just a name and I wasn't going to budge. Why was so important anyway? In a conversation with just three people, it was stupid to stand on unreasonable ceremony.

She caved first and looked away. Sighing, she said, "Emily."

"You know, Emily," Aylem said to me, "you're a bit frightening when you look like that."

"Say w...w...what?" I had a hard time conceiving that I could look frightening to a Cosm.

"And you should go to bed," Aylem continued. "When you're too tired, the stammer gets worse, and it's gotten noticeably worse since you arrived and it was really bad just now." She smiled helpfully.

"Interesting," Fassex remarked. "A good observation, Aylem." Fassex looked at me with that funny narrow-eyed half-lidded look characteristic of most people using body clairvoyance.

"I see," Fassex returned to a regular gaze. "You are quite tired, and still in the process of recovery, I believe. I would be remiss if I didn't help you to bed. I'm sure I would be subject to some criticism from my sister Lisaykos if I didn't take measures to safeguard your health, Emily." Fassex was smiling with too evil a glee for me to mistake that I was about to gather some retribution for winning that little stubborn staring contest we just had. I sighed and resigned myself to what was about to happen.

She stood up, smiling like a saint, a very self-satisfied saint, and scooped me up. "I will be back in a few moments, Aylem, after I put our little dear Emily to bed." Aylem, damn her, laughed with what I knew had to be pure schadenfreude. Damn Cosm.

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