(Continued from part 71)

Emily, Uldlip

"I heard your friend Ud is out and about and has a guest," Ulamis fished. "Our people saw them having tea, of all things, on the beach north of the Great Wash.

"Yes, I know," he smiled wistfully. "I spoke with Ud on the south shore of the Claw about two rotations ago."

"And the guest?"

"Her newest student. Nothing to worry about there. Ud has no reason to abandon the old agreement unless someone starts poaching her sheep."

"We know Ud is keeping to the old agreement," Ulamis said. "Her children found and helped the crew of one of our boats that ran afoul of the weather off the Fens two rotations ago. Our concern was the identity of the guest, just like when you stayed with her many years ago. Unidentified visitors on our north border will always give us pause."

"I am on my way to visit with her," Usruldes divulged. "Her guest is no threat to you."

"What about this one?" Ulamis pointed at me. "You can't tell me she's going to be Ud's student?"

Usruldes laughed, "of course not."

"Since he is going to the coast, I am tagging along under his protection," I said. "I have had a dream command from Vassu. It involves kelp."

Danasma and Ulamis laughed. "No, really, what are you doing with your griffin? Ulamis asked, still chuckling.

"I'm serious," I replied. "If you burn kelp, the ashes are a substance which I would call soda ash."

"Yes, that's right," Danasma nodded.

"If you treat the ash with the acid that's made w...with the blue and green acid rocks that comes out of the copper mines of Foskos, you can extract a substance that is light sensitive. It has some uses that could help me out w...with my mining efforts. That's what Vassu told me. So I am in search of kelp to see for myself if I was just dreaming or if Vassu really visited me in my sleep."

This time around they listened to me seriously.

"What was Vassu like in your dream?" Ulamis asked.

"Don't laugh," I held up a hand. "She w...was a big grey smooth-skinned fish with a big back fin and really big teeth. She dressed in pink and she told me I had no fashion sense."

"Not a lady with a bucket next to a well?" Danasma asked pointedly.

"I didn't even know that w...was the depiction of Vassu by the Cosm when I had my dream," I shrugged. I didn't know if I had traction with these two gals or not.

"I didn't even know who Vassu was before last year, w...when the Shrine of Mugash healed me after a bad accident. Before then, I didn't live in Foskos, didn't know their gods, and had nothing to do w...with them. Some of them don't exactly treat our kind w...well and even for those treated well, I will never approve of slavery. No thinking being, w... whether Coyn or griffin or eagle or flying horse should be property."

I didn't realize I had put teeth into my words in that last sentence as I felt the bitterness rise in me.

"Down, girl," Ulamis smiled a little defensively. "We're not your enemy. And you're with Usruldes, who we know. You are his friend, and that makes you our friend too."

"Sorry," I shrugged again. "It's a painful topic for me."

"Miner," Ulamis smiled with encouragement at me, "we've been hearing strange stories coming out of Foskos about some kind of genius Coyn who is a master artificer called Emly. Supposedly this person invented paper and a new kind of writing instrument and has a way to start fires easily without magic. How much is this is real, and how much is splashing water around?"

I noticed Usruldes shifting a little uncomfortably, but I ignored him.

"The correct name is Emily, not Emly. Emily is real and created paper with help from a woodshop in Aybhas, the support of the Shrine of Mugash, and the loan of equipment from Lord Gunndit. The pencils are real, and I have one here," I pulled a pencil out and handed it to Ulamis.

"Some of what we're hearing is very disturbing," Danasma said. "Some are saying she is a prophet and talks to the gods. But in the Cosm religion, no Coyn was ever blessed by their gods. Their religion places Cosm in a privileged position and has enslaved all other races.

"Foskos is not a place a free Coyn from our nation can walk into and investigate these strange rumors. By the terms of our ancient treaty, we're forbidden to visit Foskos, and people from Foskos are forbidden to visit us. Our concern is that someone in power in Foskos is manipulating reports to their own advantage and changing the power game there. Given that we are a neighboring nation, this is a genuine worry, especially if it changes how Coyn are treated by Cosm.

"Hey," I raised an eyebrow, "here w...we are in a yearly trading fair in the middle of a desert and you are talking about international politics. You're merchants and I am just a traveler. As far as I can tell, w...we are not people who move the policies of nations. Do these questions serve any purpose other than gossip?"

"These are honest inquiries, Miner," Ulamis said. "Camp Master of Uldlip is an important position in our government. Danasma is from one of the four ruling families and is in line to succeed her father on the council of five, which rules our nation. I myself am a past member of the council of five, in the seat elected by those with the franchise to vote. What we choose to report goes to the council of five and is listened to."

"You, Miner, are not a Coyn of Foskos, though you have been allowed to reside there as a free Coyn for the last year, which means that you must have some good connections with the ruling class there," Danasma said earnestly. "You are in a position to know the truth of these rumors that we have not the means to confirm."

"You just met me," I looked from one to the other, "how can you know I'm even trustworthy?"

"We can't," said Ulamis, "but my gut is telling me that any gal who can befriend a griffin has got something special going on in her character that makes a griffin trust her. Griffins do not trust easily."

"Miner," Danasma leaned forward, "the most disturbing news we have heard is that the Queen of Foskos, who we have both met, by the way, harmed this Emly last year. She was tortured as her punishment until Emly stopped it. Then it is said the queen lost her mind and fled into the wilderness and has been missing ever since. What part of this is true?"

"That's just about what happened," I said. "The part about the torture is a bit off. It was the deity Mugash who declared what the Queen's punishment would be. Mugash did not believe the Queen was making sufficient progress in amending the flaw in her character that led to the accidental attack on Emily. So Mugash started mental torture of the Queen by taking Emily's memories of terrible things she had endured and having the Queen relive them. Emily did not approve so she terminated the punishment, which was a power Mugash had granted Emily. It was a nuanced situation that is probably difficult to understand without being directly involved."

"How did you find all of this out?" Ulamis asked, who was a bit incredulous.

I pulled out the sandstone rock and the box of matches. I removed one of my two remaining matches from its box and struck it against the rock. As the flame flared into life, I looked at the two: "You see, I am Emily."

Ignoring their fish faces, I continued. "Vassu really did give me a dream command to find kelp and extract the substances known as iodine and bromine from it. That is one purpose for this trip. The other purpose is to find the Queen of Foskos. Vassu gave Usruldes here his own dream command, for him and me to bring her back home.

"Am I a prophet? I am not. I am no one's prophet and I w...will not accept anyone calling me that. What am I? I'm a person w...who knows how to mine rock and get metals out of them. That is my craft. You probably will never meet anyone better at it than I am. That is my conceit and my vanity. I have absolute confidence in my skill. Am I a genius? No, I am not. I know w...what geniuses look like and I'm not one of them. I just know a bit more than other people around here about how the w...world is made---that is all.

"I have had the misfortune to have been used by certain gods to deliver some revelations. I truly wish they had picked on someone else because all I w...want is to live in my workshop and make metals, w...without meddling by a gaggle of goofball gods who can't even give me a clear idea w...why I should bother to do their bidding. This time last year, I didn't even know their names and never desired to set foot in Foskos, a place w...where slavery of our kind is legal."

"So why do you heed them, if you have such disrespect for them?" Danasma asked, somewhat put out.

"Oh, I respect them. I respect any entity that has the power to screw w...with my life like this. Please do not confuse respect for liking, affection, or worship. Respect has little to do with those things. I respect the power of the gods. I know full well that I am a bug and they are the flyswatter. But there is nothing I have ever encountered that says I have to like what they've done to me and my life."

"There's no other motivation for you other than coercion by force from the gods?" asked Ulamis, who looked like she was actually understanding the point I wanted to make.

"No, they want one thing that I also want, and for that, I will heed their bidding for now. The gods want to dismantle the magic tools that make the enslavement system in Foskos possible, and they have given me the best possible tool for the task, that being Aylem, Queen of Foskos."

"What?" Usruldes gasped.

"The other thing the gods wanted me to do I have now done," I pulled my new knife from its sheath on my belt and handed it to Ulamis. "I have introduced the technology to make iron and steel."

"This is sky metal," she looked at it. "What's this patterning?"

"It is not sky metal. It is pattern welding of iron and steel. The rocks that provide the element of iron are everywhere around us. It is one of the most abundant substances on the planet. Just sitting here, I know that if I had half a day to spend, I could separate enough black sand from that sand bar over there in the river to make enough iron to make a knife similar to this. Sky metal is a mix of iron and another metal called nickel. It looks similar to this, but Foskans made that knife with black sand out of the Rig River in Omexkel. I trained the metalsmiths who forged it, both Coyn and Cosm at the Shrine of Giltak.

"The process is not difficult, though if you tried it without a guide, it would probably take some experimentation to get it to work. I suspect that next year, these knives will show up here as trade goods. If I had the ore on hand, it would take me two days to extract the iron and then forge a knife like that, assuming I had the stamina to endure the work, which I lack right now."

"Ow!" Ulamis discovered my knife's edge.

"There are only two real advantages to iron as a material. It's abundant, which drops the cost of making tools significantly. Say goodbye to the expense of finding and fighting over deposits of tin ore to make bronze. There is now a cheap substitute. The other advantage is that you can sharpen one of these knives sharper than bronze, and it will keep its edge ten times longer."

I leaned back and looked up and Usruldes. "I'm feeling kinda tired, Usruldes. Can we set up camp so I can fall over now?"

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