Usruldes, Lisaykos' bedroom

I sat down on that old armchair of my mother’s with Emily in my arms. I was always amazed at how small she was since the force of her personality was so large. I grabbed the throw blanket off the back of the chair and wrapped it around her before she had a chance to protest. She pulled it over her head and hid in it while she silently wept. I held her snugly, being careful not to hold her too tight. She grew quiet and still after a while.

“You awake, Great One?” I asked very softly so it would not wake her if she had fallen asleep.

“W...what did I tell you about the use of all those damn Foskan titles when in private?” a quiet insistent voice grumped at me.

“That I should call you Emily, Great One,” I teased. She was fun to tease.

“Arg," was her reply. She was visited by gods last night so her thoughts were nothing but chaotic noise. I couldn't tell what she was thinking, but I could make an intelligent guess that she was mentally weary after days of being civil and polite to too many Cosm. She probably didn't have the energy for conversation with emotional content.

I surmised that what she needed was the one thing she couldn't have right now: some time alone away from the rest of us. I decided to distract her instead. I knew that giving Emily a problem to gnaw on often resulted in making her forget her grumpy moods.

“Yo, Emily, I heard that you had some interesting things to say about edema yesterday before I got here. As someone with pretensions of having some healing skills, can I get a review of what you said about the subject?”

“What?" The blanket flipped back off her head, and she gave me an indecipherable look.

“Remember, I do Ud magic, not Foskan magic. I wanted to hear what your thought about edema and magic.”

“Oh,” she frowned. “It’s something like this: magic is the manipulation of time coupled with either the manipulation of energy or mass or both," Emily explained. "Regardless, all of these things can be observed and then quantified into laws describing how they w...work. It's the time component of magic that's the most important. We already know that healers can regress brain cells in time so you can retrain motor control after a brain injury. They can also accelerate the growth of new cells to knit a bone back together.

"Given that a healer can run time backward or forwards, then w...why not use magic to speed up the breakdown and assimilation of the dead blood cells that cause the discoloration of bruises? Or to accelerate time to reduce the fluid build-up of edema? If you can accelerate time to do repair bone and regress time to heal wounds, then it should also be possible to remove bruises and edema by regressing or advancing time."

"So, tell me," I had to ask, "if it's really that simple, then why hasn't a healer discovered it already?"

Emily shrugged. "I don't know. I do know that many things appear obvious as soon as someone discovers them. Hindsight is brutal. Look at making sugar from hog-feed beets or sweet syrup from maple trees. They appear obvious today because of hindsight but they weren't obvious in the past."

"You just did it again, Emily," the voice of Lisaykos remarked from the doors into my mother’s bedroom from the dining room. She walked in and immediately picked a wax tablet on the night table next to her bed. "Now, what were you saying about sweet syrup from maple trees?" She took out a stylus and faced us, ready to write.

"Oh bother," little Emily shook her head with a grimace. "Not again?"

"Yes, again, dear heart," Lisaykos leaned against the window jamb. "Now, tell me about syrup made from trees." She smiled at Emily.

"Run out of fluffy bunnies already?" Emily asked with a straight face.

"I'm currently considering cute fluffy chicks, just as a stopgap while waiting for a fresh shipment of small children and kittens." Lisaykos's smile deepened. These two had an in-joke going. "So, sweet syrup made from maple trees?”

Lisaykos, Healing Shrine of Mugash

I was able to mindcast Kamagishi and convinced her to return with her mother. I was the wrong person to be counseling Aylem since I was one of the parties responsible for the damaging oversights in raising her. Kamagishi was done in Gunndit already and they were sitting around gossiping with my daughter. After I requested Kamagishi, all three of them showed up.

Kamagishi and Lyappis took Aylem off to eat somewhere. My daughter suggested we go shopping. She even brought her old hooded mantle from the White Shrine. I had her wait while I checked on my son and Emily. My clever boy had her speculating about the nature of magic and the effects of time manipulation on the healing arts. Then she said something quite intriguing:

“There are many things which appear obvious as soon as someone discovers them. Hindsight is brutal. Look at making sugar from hog-feed beets or sweet syrup from maple trees. They appear obvious today because of hindsight but they weren't obvious in the past."

I dove for the nearest wax tablet and after the usual banter with Emily, I was ready to write. “So, sweet syrup made from maple trees?” I prodded.

"At the end of the cold season when the snow begins to melt and the nights aren't so brutally cold before the mud takes hold and it's still possible for mules or draft horses to pull a sleigh, you take a small hole about five to eight hands up the trunk of a maple tree that’s at least a hand and a half in width. Insert a metal tube not too much wider than my thumb. Don’t pound it in more than a finger. If the sap is flowing, and that’s what you want, then hang a pail on the tap and cover the top. Come back the next day to collect the sap that’s run into the pail and hang it back up.

“When you collect the sap, it must to boiled immediately to prevent it from fermenting. Boil it until it reaches a temperature around two to three degrees higher than the boiling temperature of water. That's 102 to 103 on the scale I've worked out with Raoleer and Huhoti. It will be syrup by then. That's the overview of the process. This will work for syrup made from the sap of sycamore and hickory trees too. Do I need to repeat any of that, dear heart?" She looked at me with a slightly annoyed smile.

“Fascinating,” my daughter said, leaning on the door jamb.

“Eeeee!” Emily screamed. “Oh dear. Oh my.” She turned to see my now-startled daughter in the doorway. “Oh, I didn’t know you were there. I didn’t expect anyone to be behind me. That was quite unexpected.” She hid her hands quickly under the blanket to hide the shaking.

“I’m sorry, Great One,” Katsa got on her knees in front of Emily, “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“No, no, it was just unexpected, that’s all,” Emily smiled in a friendly way. “It’s just one of those things that happens, especially to me when I concentrate on one thing. Please think nothing of it.”

“I’d offer you a charm of peace but I’m told they don’t work on you,” Katsa said, sitting on her heels and trying to look as small as possible. Poor Katsa. She’ll never look small. She has a big frame and a lot of muscle. She makes Imstay look small when she stands next to him.

“Somehow, Lord Gunndit, I have the feeling that you’ll be back after Coldtide to get some more particulars,” Emily smiled knowingly. “Can I give you some advice on the beet sugar, now that I’ve seen what you gave your mother?”

“What?” Katsa leaned forward eagerly.

“After you draw the liquid from the mush and evaporate it, if the crystals still have some brown in them, dissolve them in hot water, distill the liquid, and then evaporate it again. Do this until the crystals of sugar make white cubes. You’re almost there but I noticed some were still a bit colored. The whiter the cubes, the cleaner the taste.”

“Yes, I will try that,” Katsa nodded. “You should think of teaching at the Bountiful Shrine of Mueb, Great One. Now, I wandered back here to see where my mother disappeared. So I will collect my mother and we’ll be off. May the gods bless you, Great One.”

“And you too, Lord Gunndit. Have fun shopping.”

Katsa and I retreated but not before I heard my son say: "Let's sneak out of here for mid repast. I know this great little place on the bench above the north market."

- - -

Emily, Aybhas

I have no idea why I feel comfortable with Usruldes. I suspect it's because we shared that evening being chased by mages on eagles in the Island Swamp. He’s always been a good friend to me.

After I got over the jitters from being startled by Lord Gunndit, I threw on my shrine mantle, a green overtunic, pants, and shoes. When I returned to Lisaykos' bedroom, he was already in a tan overtunic and the green mantle and cape of a courier.

I was greatly amused when he took me to the same street food stand that Thuorfosi and Wolkayrs took me to during the last cold season. The Cosm lady who took the orders told us of a new beverage on the menu.

“It’s called sekanjabin. It’s cold and it’s very minty,” she said.

Usruldes and I looked at each other and had to look away before we started laughing. Of course, we ordered sekanjabin. We split an order of nips and three skewers of meatballs. The same kid, Eddo, seated us. He really did have lovely hazel eyes. I winked at him. He winked back. Usruldes teased me about it.

I only had room for one nip and managed to eat one of the huge meatballs. I was quite full by the time I finished. I have no idea how Usruldes was able to eat the rest but it vanished quickly. He must have been hungry.

We were the first ones back. I was sinking into post-meal drowsiness when Lyappis, Kamagishi, and Aylem returned. Aylem made a path straight to where I was nodding off on the lounge.

“Emily dear,” she knelt next to me. “I’m sorry.”

"I know," I didn't know what else to say. "Nobody was hurt and the shrine's still standing. That's not a bad result."

“But...”

“No buts allowed,” I sighed. “I bet you consider this morning a failure, don’t you?”

“Yes, it was, and the second failure in as many days.”

“You know, most people don’t learn from their successes. They learn from their failures. I wish I could remember who said that, but regardless, it’s true in most cases.”

“But...”

“What did I say about buts?” I shook my head. “So there was this business that needed a bookkeeper. The first person to be interviewed was just out of school. He sits down and the interviewer asked what was one plus one. The bookkeeper says ‘two.’ The interviewer says: we’ll be in touch. So the next candidate with about 20 years of experience comes in and he gets asked the same question. He too says ‘two.’ The interviewer says: we’ll be in touch. Then the third bookkeeper comes in. He’s about sixty and has years of experience. He gets asked what’s one plus one. He stops and thinks for a moment and then leans forward and says: ‘what do you want it to be?’ The interviewer hires him on the spot.”

Aylem, the former bookkeeping student, laughed. “I can’t remember the last time I heard a good accounting joke.”

“Ha!” I pointed a finger at her, “made you laugh. Now let me get back to my post-meal snooze.” And snooze I did. By closing my eyes, I could hide from the sight of too many silverhairs looming. I slept through Lisaykos and Katsa returning. I think I would have kept sleeping but angry voices woke me up.

Aylem swore, “they will regret they were ever born,” she stormed out of the study.

“I’ll meet you there,” Katsa chased after Aylem.

“Wait for me,” Kamagishi ran after them.

Usruldes dropped his charm of circular light. “I’m staying right here,” he told his mother. “Even just Aylem is more than enough force to stop an attack.”

“What’s happened,” I asked.

“The Crystal Shrine is under attack,” Lisaykos was pacing behind her work table, which she did when she was too wound up to work. It didn't happen often but it did happen. “It’s probably our Impotuan friends who escaped the raid in Esso.”

“At least we know where they are now,” I commented. I was dozing off again when the shrine bell started ringing and didn’t stop. I heard the sounds of screams and shouting. Usruldes was out the door at a run. Lisaykos was on his heels. Lyappis walked to the door of the study and looked out into the main corridor. She beckoned the guard at the door into the atrium from the corridor and asked her something I couldn’t hear.

“One of you should close and lock all the atrium doors,” I then heard her say. Then she turned and closed the study door and charmed it shut. Walking briskly through the study, she did the same to the door into the dining room.

“We are under attack?” I asked her.

"It looks like they are targeting the Well of Mugash, maybe for the crystal since it can make charms that protect against infections." She walked over to one of the windows to look out but didn't make it that far. A rock at least two or more hands in diameter smashed through the window and caught Lyappis on the shoulder and neck. She fell hard and I could see blood spraying. Two Cosm men in everyday clothes jumped into the room. My shadow guards engaged them but another rock took out the other window behind Lisaykos' table and more men leapt into the room.

The strange sight of the intruders fighting the wraiths who were invisible was the last thing I remembered.