Emily, Shrine of Landa

Fassex entered my guest room and closed the door with her foot. Then she put me down gently and sat down on one of the sitting cushions on the floor.

"Now that I have you alone, please, Emily, how is the Queen doing, really?" Fassex was suddenly serious and concerned.

"Her calm is a front," I replied, knowing that Fassex needed an honest opinion right now. "Her confidence in herself is in t...tatters. She's afraid of herself and w...what she might do, now that she has crossed the line and done real harm due to her bad temper. I also have no w...w...way to measure w...whether she has regained all of her m...memory or if there are g...gaps."

"Wait," Fassex stopped me. "She lost her memory?"

"Wh...when w..we found her, she had w...what I would call trauma-induced amnesia, Holy One."

"Gods," Fassex dropped her head into her hands for a long moment. Then she looked at me, "two things. First, if I have to call you Emily, you need to call me Fassex."

"I wasn't sure where the boundaries were with you. I did not want to presume," I said honestly.

"I find the way you look at the world strange," she was honest back. "You do not think like most other people."

"That's a fair assessment," I remarked. "So, the second thing?"

"If she lost her memory and then regained at least some of it, is Aylem well enough to be out on the world right now?"

"I don't know, Fassex. I really d...don't; but as you just saw, she's functional enough to t...take down the army threatening this town and shrine. I do w...worry about leaving her alone for long periods because she's feeling horrible about herself. I am concerned about d... depression, and self-harm if she's left to herself."

"How was she when you found her? And where did you find her?" She looked at me frowning. "I am being inconsiderate. You do need rest and here I am peppering you with questions. I will return to talk some more in the morning." She reached out and lightly touched me on the head. When I woke sometime before dawn, I knew she had put me to sleep. Damn adepts.

---

Usruldes, Pinisla

The Impotuans left a small garrison at Pinisla. The few inhabitants of the rebuilding community were either dead at the invaders' hands or had fled. I found some of them in the forest, in their hunting camps out of sight of the Impotuans. They told me a story that left dread in my heart. Bobbo by himself created a bottleneck at the gate of the palisade he had built around the new townsite. He fought off the invading soldiers one at a time. The Impotuans surely had not anticipated encountering a seven-times single-combat champion of Foskos at the gates of this tiny community.

When the General was sure he had given the residents time to flee, he leapt the wall and fled, only to be peppered full of arrows. He was last seen trying to cross the river. No one had seen him since and his mount was missing. A missing mount suggested strongly that Lord Bobbo was dead.

The residents who hadn't successfully fled, all four of them, had been tortured and killed except for one: Kayseo. The Impotuans have a law that it is a capital offense to kill a healer or to harm one in a way that would make it impossible to heal others. So instead of killing Kayseo, first they cast befuddlement and illusion on her. This was to prevent her from defending herself with her formidable magic. They started their torture of her by crushing the bones in her arms by dropping large rocks on them. The Pinisla residents who successfully fled to the forest heard her screaming.

The Impotuans did not harm her hands at all since hands are needed by a healer to use healing magic. Then they cut off her feet. They left her legs alone since she was still a growing teenager. Harming the open growth zones in her legs' bones would be harmful to a healer since that would stop her growth and limit her ultimate healing power. I guess Impotuan law considered such technicalities to be a legitimate interpretation of their laws concerning harm to healers.

Somewhere in all of this fun they had with Kayseo, they gang-raped her. They also cut out her tongue, cut off her ears, sliced off her nose, pulled out a number of her teeth, and then gouged out her eyes. Listening to them as I scouted out their garrison, I also discovered that they thought it was great entertainment to strip her naked and brand her buttocks. Then, they cut off her breasts and finished by leaving her hanging by her pristine hands on the inside of the palisade wall so they could laugh at her pain.

By their own laws, they had not killed her nor had they taken away her ability to heal since she still had her hands and intact growth zones in her legs.

When I found her broken and dying body, I cast stasis on her. If she was aware at all, I did not want her to know what happened next. First I cast the forbidden charm of miasmic fear so that not one of them would have a peaceful death. Once they were all frantic with fear, I killed the entire garrison of 300, one soldier at a time. Some I set on fire. Others I gutted with my knives or beheaded with a sword I took from their garrison captain.

The ones who I found that had participated in her rape I cast stasis on. After all the others were dead, I strung each rapist up on the palisade wall and robbed them of the ability to move. First, I castrated them. Then I slowly cut out each of their tongues, lobbed off their noses, sliced off their ears, and gouged out their eyes. Then I burned each of the rapists, slowly while still alive, starting with their feet. When I was done venting my anger, I burned all the bodies to ash so there would be no evidence of how they died.

I heard Ud calling me and I answered.

* I am worried for you, child. You are in a dark place right now. *

"I admit I was lost to my rage, Ud," I mindcasted. I didn't have the range to reach Ud but she had the range to hear me. "The girl they maimed is a friend." I showed Ud in my mind what they had done and explained that Kayseo was a young prodigy of healing magic. I also showed Ud my memories of the ceremony where she became heir and was promoted to full healer at just 16.

* Are her feet lost? *

"I can not find them and it has already been more than two days."

* What a shame. Do you remember creation magic and unraveling time? *

"I was bad at them, remember?"

* That was because you were a child when I taught them to you. The fully grown you should be able to sustain both. I can see in your mind that you remember how to use them. Start with her eyes, then her tongue, then her ears, then her nose, then her breasts. I will help you with the teeth. *

"What about her feet?"

* You do not have enough magic to do bone. You can mend but you can not create bone. I am sorry. *

"I understand."

I knelt at her side where I had placed her on the ground and recalled a magic lesson from 17 years ago. It took two bells to restore her face, chest, and head. It was difficult and draining magic. Then I wrote a letter to my mother on my precious supply of paper. I explained what had happened. Then I wrapped Kayseo in a blanket, strapped her into Cadrees' saddle, and sent Cadrees and the letter to Aybhas.

I flew myself to where the remaining inhabitants of Pinisla were hiding in the forest and told them that I had eliminated the garrison and healed Kayseo as much as I could. Then I flew downhill over the White River, starting from the palisade, looking for Bobbo's body.

I didn't find his dead body. I found Bobbo barely alive on the river bank. I cast stasis on him and removed the arrows, healing the arrow punctures as I pulled the arrows out. Most of his bones were broken, including his skull and spine. I levitated him and flew with him over the pass into Truvos as the sun went down. From there, I followed the Black River to my mother's shrine. I landed on the courtyard in front of the shrine which attracted a great deal of attention. I walked inside, ignoring the spectators in the courtyard, and brought the levitated Bobbo to the greeting table.

"This is Lord Bobbo haup Pinisla, General of the Left in the king's army. He has many bones broken so I dare not put him down. Please hurry and take him from me since I am close to exhausting my magic."

In the distance, I saw my mother exit the south stairwell and come running. Several other healers also came at a run.

My mother approached Bobbo and appraised him and me. Then she rattled off instructions to the healers present on how to move him. It was a relief when I could finally relax the levitation charm.

"Lord Usruldes, the only reason you are still standing is your stubborn resolve," my mother told me. "I am invoking the grace of Mugash for you to rest here. I will inform the King as to what happened in Pinisla."

"Great One," I began to protest, "I must..."

I couldn't remember what happened next because my mother cast a charm on me.

---

Emily, White Shrine of Landa

The bell tower of the shrine was the highest spot in Yant. I woke up early, just like the day before at the beach. Unable to fall back asleep, I started exploring. It wasn't hard to find the stair up to the roof. From there I found the bell tower and its wonderful view. Though I needed more sleep, I enjoyed watching the sun come up over the mountains. Fassex found me there.

"I thought you would still be asleep," she said, seating herself on the same handrail around the bell tower that I had perched upon.

"I thought I w...would still be asleep too," I admitted. "I w...will likely have a nap sometime during the day."

"Have you eaten?"

"Not yet."

"Do you have any strong morn repast preferences?"

"Not really though left to myself, eggs and bacon are what I w...would cook." I pointed at the steady line of people leaving the shrine, "w...were there really that many people inside the shrine last evening?"

"About half the town was able to flee and the other half took refuge inside the shrine. I didn't want to release that many people at night. This is their first chance to return to their homes for those lucky enough to have a home that's standing and unlooted."

"And those who are unlucky?" I asked.

"The shrine will take care of them until new homes can be built. The Queen decided to give her spoils of war from using the charm to the people of Yant, to help pay for new construction. About half the adepts and all the trainees are out organizing those spoils. It will help to pay costs up front instead of waiting for money from the kingdom treasury."

"Fassex, w...why haven't I seen a single garrison guard in Yant?"

"The entire garrison was cut down defending the city walls. They also slaughtered Lord Masha and his lady, who was once a working priestess librarian of Galt. I have searchers out looking for their two daughters."

"Ouch. Not good," I contemplated just how soon the looting would start by the city's low life.

"Help is coming from the Shrine of Erhonsay. They should be here sometime after the fourth bell. Kas is not too far away."

"W...were you one of the adepts who raised Aylem as a little girl?"

"Yes," her face was pensive. "There were three of us. We had a house about a wagon-day up the Yantes River from here. The other two have already passed. I am the last one still living. We were the three most powerful adepts at the shrine. We had to be because we needed to shield ourselves from her. She was and is that powerful. When she was nine, the Convocation was split on whether we should remove her from the land of the living. Akoep, who was the high priestess at the Crystal Shrine at the time had a dream command for Aylem to visit. That's when Aylem received her revelation From Tiki."

Fassex sighed. "Once she was blessed by a god, there wasn't anything we could do to her. While she was at Tiki's shrine, she inserted her flame into the Great Crystal and it's been there ever since. We knew then she would be Queen."

"I haven't seen that revelation," I stated. Lisaykos told me there were no copies of it. The only copy of it was at the Shrine of Tiki and it was sealed.

"Aylem's revelation scared the convocation into paralysis," Fassex explained. "It says, in brief, that Aylem would break the kingdom's magic and create new magic to replace it. "

I was shocked. That matched what Landa told me when I was dead.

"Landa said what to you?" It was Fassex's turn to be shocked.

"I guess that thought was a little too clear," I remarked.

"Just a bit," she shook her head. "Forgive me, I need a moment to settle my head."

"Sorry."

"Don't be. It's my problem, not yours." Her eyes focused and she took in and let out a deep breath. "What's your real age, Emily?"

"Somewhere between 85 and 87, I think. I don't know when or where I w...was born this time around."

I had decided overnight that if Fassex was serious about helping Aylem, she needed full disclosure beyond what Kamagishi had probably already told her. "Fassex, w...were you sincere about helping with Aylem's problem?"

"I helped raise her so I feel responsible, at least in part, for how she turned out. For that which I had a hand in making, I should attempt to see it mended before I leave this life."

It was disclosure time. "Aylem is another person who has memories of an earlier life, as does her griffin," I stated. "They are both from the same place I'm from." Fassex's consternation was profound.

"If you're serious about helping her, Fassex, then you need to know that her little anger problem may have roots in her previous life. She admitted to me and Asgotl that her mother w...was addicted to alcohol and made Aylem's home life hell. She never had a chance to grow out of it. She died when she was 17, during the most terrible w...war ever fought. I'm not sure if it is relevant to the way she now, but it's something to be aware of."

"How did she die?"

"Those little balls of phosphorus you used yesterday? Those are toys compared to the bombs dropped on her city from the air. She was either caught by an explosion or she had a building collapse on top of her."

"Great Gertzpul!"

"Thankfully, she doesn't remember the moment she died."

"Sounds like you did," she fished. I was a good fish and took the worm off the hook.

"There was an epidemic. I caught the disease. It took me six days to die as my lungs progressively failed. I slowly suffocated as my lungs filled with fluid, a...w...wake for most of it. It w...was not a good time."

"That's rather gruesome," Fassex remarked. "Change of subject, if you know you are getting a revelation from Landa, why have you not gone to the Well of Landa to receive it?"

"Reason one: I don't w...want to get stuck here writing it down while there's a war on. Reason two: if Aylem must reshape magic as the result of my revelation from Landa, then the middle of an invasion is a lousy time for that. Aylem is a walking breathing strategic defense system for Foskos. Defending the people who live in Foskos is her priority right now, and not following my revelation, which I assume will destroy a magic system and replace it with something new.

“Reason Three: Aylem must have the leeway to act as she sees fit during this emergency and a revelation will get in the way of that. I’m sure that one of the reasons the Impotuans invaded is because they heard the Queen of Foskos had run away from her kingdom. No, now is not the right time for a revelation."

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