Emily, dreaming

I fell asleep after mid repast and dreamed of the second time I was with a large number of other Coyn since Aylem dragged me out of my valley. Galt took me to the Coyn in Salicet at my request during our road trip out east, a few hours after the fire at Shrine of Galt and the great library of Salicet.

I had to wonder about a cat god who volunteered to play taxi for me, but I wasn't in a position where I could complain. Would anyone in their right mind tell the god of wrath they didn't want his help? To be honest, it looked fun.

I slowly faded into view on Galt's back in the middle of the largest slave pens inside the slave yards in Salicet. The Coyn fled until there was an empty circle of mud around me. I looked at the crowd of slaves in simple unbleached tunics. This pen was for women who were young but did not have children. From my perch on Galt's back, I could see the next pen over was filled with young men.

There was nothing but slave pens as far as I could see. In the distance, the palace and library in Salicet still burned. If the wind kept up, the fire would burn this way. Since the wind tended to increase every afternoon during the growing season, I think it was just a matter of time. Because of the wind and the scarcity of mages, attempts to put the fire out failed.

"Listen to me," I shouted. "The fire may burn all the way to the pens. You must run away if that happens or you will die.

"How can we run with charm stones of compulsion on us?" a young woman called back in an accent I had never heard before.

"This morning, the crystal in the Shrine of Galt was destroyed. They can no longer compel you to do anything because the giant crystal at that shrine that made the compulsion charms possible was shattered. Thirty years ago, the crystal at the Shrine of Landa in Suapsepso was destroyed by a fire, which was when charms of control began to fail in this country.

"Unless the gem in your hand was made in Foskos, Mattamesscontess, or Jutu, you should be able to walk out of here without the gem preventing you. If your gem still works, someone should knock you out and drag you out of here. The fire is coming this way. You must flee. Spread this news to every pen and lead the Chem to safety because they are blind.

"You don't have a gem," another voice accused. "How could you know the agony we have from these cursed things?"

"I once had a gem," I shouted back. "On the day that I resolved I would rather die than bear a charm gem one minute longer, I bit it off my hand and spat it into the sewage ditch where it belonged."

The woman who yelled the first question looked at me with a scowl, lifted her hand to her mouth, and bit down. We stared at each other while her teeth scraped the skin from the back of her hand as she bit it off. She dramatically spat it into the dirt.

She held up her hand for her companions to see: "It worked. I just bit the gem off my hand!"

"What?"

"No!"

"Yes, it worked!"

"I did it!"

The voices of the women rose as one after another, they bit the gems off their hands. The chaos lasted a long moment.

"What now?" the young woman asked, "and where did you get a giant cat trained to let you ride it?"

"Well, he's not a trained animal," I scratched behind his ear. "He's a friend and he's taking me around because I have short legs and can't travel quickly. As to what happens next, that's up to you. I won't be back this way this year or even next year. The year after is when I will come to the Coyn fighting for their freedom on the east side of the Stem River. Those who are free should try to reach a place called Uldlip on the west side of the Blue Mountains. A place north of there is an empty country ripe for settlement, full of timber, and good conditions for mushrooms, root crops, and excellent pasture for sheep and goats. The streams are full of fish and the mountains full of metal ores. I know because it is my home."

"Who are you that you can promise this?" someone male yelled from one pen over.

"My name is Emily," I called out. "The gods sent me to see that the five enslaved races become free once more."

"But how can we fight the Cosm? They are giants with dreadful magic."

"Not all Cosm approve of slavery. Some want to abolish it. I have some partners in this endeavor, and one of them is the greatest Cosm mage ever born. No one is powerful enough to oppose her. She already abolished mandatory slavery for the three flying races in Foskos and created rights for flying slaves to stop the mistreatment. Her start of reforms has prevailed for almost 15 years now. No one dares oppose her. I may bring the news about your freedom but she has the power to make it stick."

"I won't believe it until I see it," someone yelled.

"Then I say that you should save up your patience because when you see the Foskan army, that will be the day you meet Cosm who will protect you from slavery instead of enslaving you. I can't promise that there won't be fighting and bloodshed. I can't promise that some of us won't die in the march toward freedom. We can fight the Cosm face-to-face but only through stealth, intelligence, and weapons they can not protect against."

"What sort of weapons can fight against magic?"

Galt felt my intent and carried me to the fence between the pens so I could be seen by more people. I stood on Galt's back, pulled out a match and the striking stone, and waited until I was sure most were watching. I lit the match, protecting its flame from the wind with my body. The number of gasps told me enough people had seen it.

"They call me the Maker of Fire," I put the striking stone away. "I make things that explode and can make fire that magic can't put out. Let me give you a gift for the future. Save the bones of the pigeons and rabbits and squirrels you eat and clean them as clean as your can. Dry them and warm them on the side of your cooking fires to get all the fleshy bits off them. Then grind them up into a powder. Make a vessel out of the clay you use to make the bowls you eat out of and fire it so it won't leak. Put the dried bone powder in this vessel and fill it with piss. Boil the two together. The solid that forms is dangerous but you can make bombs with it.

"Don't touch this stuff. Make leather or animal skin clothes to protect yourselves --- mittens too. This stuff is dangerous. Don't get it on your skin and if you do, wash it off and keep washing for a quarter bell. The powder itself is a poison so don't breath it in and keep food and drink away from it.

When you boil the bones, start the fire and walk away. Do not return until all the liquid has boiled away and the powder is caked and dry. You might die otherwise. This is really nasty stuff but if you need to fight Cosm, it's a powerful weapon. This stuff will kill and injure Cosm. You can destroy wooden gates and bridges with it too. To get it to burn and explode, you add water to it.

"Make separate ceramic containers for the powder and water, wrap them together and throw them at Cosm, or wooden building to burn them down. Or you can dig a little shallow hole, put in the bomb, and cover it up in a place where a Cosm will step. If you put sharp pebbles and metal scrap in the bomb wrapping, you can do even more damage to Cosm when the bombs explode. We can only fight with weapons like this since we can't fight the Cosm face-to-face and survive.

"You'll need to experiment to get the proportions right on making these bombs and with making the containers to keep the water and powder apart until you want them to go off. But be careful because the bomb powder is very dangerous and it lets off a poison gas when it burns so don't breathe it in if the powder accidentally ignites while you're making the bombs.

"Now let me teach you a song to sing while you escape today." Then, I taught them the 'We not gonna take it' song by Twisted Sister, because it was simple and easy to learn and very to the point. It spread so fast that it was in Foskos before I arrived home.

- - -

Emily, the resumption of the trial of Oyseray of Arkmet

"The charm of compulsion is still working, Holy One?" I asked Kamagishi. She nodded as the guards brought Oyseray the leather crafter back into the room and made her kneel. The magic pen and scroll were already recording.

"This is the resumption of the trial of Oyseray of Arkmet Village," Kamagishi announced, an action that quieted the room. "The preceding is yours, Great One" she made a bowing obeisance to me.

Thank you, Holy One. Oyseray, please tell me, what do you think of Coyn?" I found the heavy amount of murmuring that followed my question interesting.

"Coyn are worthless, not worth the money, and better off removed from Foskos entirely, Great One," she briefly glanced at Fassex with nervousness and then looked back at me.

"Now," I sat up in surprise, "that is a novel opinion I have never heard before. Please explain: why you think this way?"

"A trained Coyn costs 50 to 200 silver from the training schools run by the Shrine of Surd, but even a trained Coyn can't carry more than one large skin of bovine leather at a time. He or she needs a special bench or a special chair and table to do any work, and tools scaled for smaller hands. That costs even more money. Then, they need to be fed, and they need clothes and covers in the cold season and a place to sleep during the cold too. And for all that money, they still don't produce enough to pay for their upkeep. Chickens are more useful. Chickens are smaller than Coyn, but at least you can eat them and their eggs."

Kamagishi caught my attention, "May I?" She had some questions. I cupped my hand for yes.

"Oyseray, you just said you needed to provide a place for Coyn to sleep in the cold season. What do you mean by that? Did your shop inYuxvos lack sleeping quarters for the household Coyn?"

"Oh, we had places inside the shop for them to sleep but I didn't want them in the shop overnight, where they might get into things or use up too much firewood. So I had them sleep in the storage shed."

"In the cold season? Did the shed have heat?"

"Oh, no, Holy One. We used the shed only for things which wouldn't be affected by the cold."

"How many Coyn died of the cold in your shed, Oyseray?" I had to ask.

"Four."

"How many Coyn died after you disciplined them, Oyseray?"

"Four."

"How long did it take them to die?"

"Three immediately, and one was paralyzed, so I just took care of it."

"How?" I was feeling sick to my stomach.

"I snapped his neck."

I was silent and unmoving for an entire sixteenth mark on Lord Sopno's water clock as I fought to keep the contents of my meal inside of me. I waited until I was sure I could speak, and then I began to state my third legal opinion, which argued that Foskan Law shared the guilt for the deaths of those ten Coyn.

(continued in Part 2 Installment 10, the conclusion of the trial)