Emily, Healing Shrine, 7th rot., 8th day

"This would go much quicker if I carried you, Great One," Arma said with just a trace of impatience. "You do walk slowly." She was wearing the white kirtle and grey robes of a Foskan healer and was working shifts down at the chapel shrine where the healers treated Coyn. Kayseo told me that Arma was very good with Coyn. That sounded right to me, given my experience with her.

"I can tell you are being as patient as possible with me," I stepped off the half-height steps onto the third floor. A wraith in a light-blue guards-style jacket with black facings held the gate open for me. The wraiths had placed a gate on the south wing stair landing to control access to the fourth floor. They adopted the guard jackets to wear over their wraith outfits while on visible guard duty. I thought it was amusing that the buttons had spiders on them.

"I will continue walking, Arma. You'll just need to put up with me for a little while longer," I gravitated next to the wall, which was the safest place to walk in a building filled with Cosm. The dangerous moments were when I needed to pass a door. The doors into a patient's room could disgorge a healer who might not see me in time to stop. It was a worry.

Her mother was in the room twelve doors down. Arma knocked and then held the door open for me. Mieth was in a house coat practicing with a Cosm-scale walker. She wore temporary prosthetics with boot-shaped ends for feet. Her back was to us when we entered but she was in the process of turning around.

"Arma!" She smiled when she spotted Arma with her turned head. She hadn't seen me yet. "If I can travel the length of the two main corridors and the atrium walkway tomorrow, I will qualify for the walker races."

The races were a new thing at the shrine since the arrival of walkers. Patients who were relearning how to walk raced one another with walkers under the supervision of their healers though the activity wasn't mandatory. The healers arranged the matches so there would not be any mismatched races. Prizes were fresh fruit in season or from the stasis rooms out of season.

Kayseo and Kibbilpos started the races as walkers appeared in the shrine. The races were very popular with everyone except for maybe Lisaykos, who treasured her peace and quiet. Aylem told me that Lisaykos closed the doors between her study, the stairwell, and the atrium so she wouldn't hear all the joviality from the third floor where the races were held.

Mieth maneuvered the walker completely around and gasped when she saw me, "Great Prophet, the blessings of Mugash be upon you. Please pardon my inability to give you proper reverence," she balanced precariously with one hand on the walker and the other over her heart.

"Item one," I sighed, "may the blessings of the eleven gods be upon you, Holy One. Item two, please be at your ease, Holy One. Item three, I don't think it's apropos for a patient with limited mobility to be worrying about whatever is considered proper reverence in this case. Item four, last time we spoke, Mieth, I thought we were safely on a first-name basis and at our liberty to jettison all this cumbersome and unnecessary precedence etiquette when in private."

Mieth just gaped at me in disbelief.

"Arma, could I get a hand up to sit on the bed?"

"So, you'll take a lift onto the bed but you insist on walking everywhere at your turtle-like pace?" She helped me onto the bed and I sat with my back against the wall.

"I can walk everywhere I want but I can't climb up onto any beds while my arm is still in a sling," I protested. I neglected to mention I used steps to get onto the beds of the shrine since not a single Cosm would tolerate my pulling myself up by scaling the covers.

"She's a very difficult case, Mama," Arma said to Mieth. "I have seldom met anyone quite so stubborn as little Emly here." Impotuans found it difficult not to drop the middle syllable of my name.

Arma helped her mother sit down in an armchair. Mieth looked distressed.

"Great Prophet," Mieth began despite the scowling face I gave her, "You appeared like a vision before me in my imprisonment. You made fire without the use of magic. You vanished the same way you came, leaving me a candle that I could feel was the creation of a god. I have saved it as the holy object that it is. Now, here you sit before me with nine godmarks on your aura, compelling me to revere you. How can I possibly show such disrespect as to address you as less than you are?"

"Emly," Arma said gently, "one of my mother's special talents is that she's more sensitive to aura than most healers. She can't help reacting this way. Bear with it, please."

"Oh dear," I sighed, "this is most awkward. Do whatever makes you most comfortable, Holy One, and I will abide. It's difficult for me to understand since I can't feel auras or godmarks or anything like that. I don't feel any different now than I did two years ago, before the gods uprooted my simple life," I looked at Mieth with a smile, "I'm afraid I feel more suited to being an artificer than a prophet. Seriously, from where I sit, I'm just a Coyn who likes to make stuff. That's all. It's hard to wrap my brain around the thought of being, well, you know."

I could tell that poor Mieth would be a difficult one to handle. She had filled out from her underfed state in the cavern. She looked happy and well in real clothes instead of rags, with clean hair and manicured hands. Regardless of appearances, Arma had warned me that Mieth was still fragile. Living in the dark all alone for nine years had eroded her mental state and she was still struggling to interact with people again. Lyappis, who went around apologizing for being retired, added Mieth as a patient so I wasn't too worried.

The Holy Mieth would bounce back, at least I hoped she would. Arma and the Holy Losnana kept her company and encouraged her every day. Losnana and her lifelong attendant, Blinda, found Mieth on the banks of the Stem River south of Salicet. They fled up the Stem to what the Foskans call the Naver River. Losnana chose that route because walking into the heart of Impotuan wheat country was the last direction anyone would expect two refugee priestesses to flee.

Losnana and Blinda walked while Mieth rode one of their three mules, all the way to the Naver mountains where a community of independent Coyn farmers and Asgotl's clan discovered them. Their flight on foot and mule took over 50 days. The three arrived at the Healing Shrine 15 days before I arrived in Truvos.

Losnana also stopped by Lisaykos' study to say hello to me. Kamagishi was setting up living quarters for her at the Fated Shrine, but Losnana was staying at the Healing Shrine in Aybhas for now while Mieth recovered from her imprisonment. The two were old friends and Losnana did not want to abandon Mieth while she was struggling. I found that loyalty to a friend touching.

Because they arrived in Aybhas before I did, the Convocation already knew I met both of the Impotuan High Priestesses. They told the Convocation all the details of my visits with them. That was the act that cemented my status as a prophet. I guess there's nothing that says "prophet" better than some miracles and a road trip with a few gods.

The griffins of the Naver aerie brought Losnana, Mieth, and Blinda to the Healing Shrine, where Lisaykos made them welcome and attended to their hurts, both physical and mental.

Lisaykos joined us when Losnana stopped in to say hello. "It was quite a commotion," Lisaykos settled into the other corner of my usual lounge while Losnana took the armchair opposite me in Lisaykos' study, "four free griffins carrying three Cosm and their baggage. They put down at the garrison, in the mounts' field because that's where they spotted other griffins.

"The garrison sent for Asgotl, who the griffins wanted to talk to. I followed him when I found out. I was making my rounds at the time. Thankfully, that lazy bag of griffin feathers was up to the task of sorting everything out, because it was his cousins who had flown the three Impotuans here. He got them settled in with the mounts at the garrison and rewarded for helping the three women get to Aybhas. I settled the three of them here on the fourth floor for now. Oh, you've not met Blinda yet, have you? You'll like her. She's a delight."

"I still can't conceive how you manage without a personal attendant, Sister Lisaykos," Losnana leaned back. Losnana was also royalty, being the daughter of an Impotuan emperor who had reigned many years ago.

"I was never alone as a child," Lisaykos looked off into the distance, past the two boarded-up windows in the east wall, waiting for new window panes. "No one would let me do anything for myself in the palace at Is'syal. Then, when I arrived here, at the Healing Shrine, I could even brush my own hair. I could pick which pair of stockings to wear, all by myself. In the morning, I could choose to wear one braid or two. I could even delay that decision until I got into trouble for being late. Oh, the joy! To be able to be late! No one had ever allowed me to be late before. No one had ever allowed me to be alone before. It was such a marvel to me. I have not wanted nor needed an attendant since. I love doing my own hair." She had a very self-satisfied and triumphant look on her face.

"That bad, eh?" Losnana prodded.

"I would say that you have no idea what it was like, but coming from a similar upbringing," Lisaykos' white eyebrows floated upward, "you probably do have a very good idea of what it was like."

"I had plenty of alone time," Losnana sighed, "and I frequently snuck out through the servants' quarters and into the city."

"I confess I was never brave enough to cross my mother to try that," Lisaykos shook her head. "My mother, Aynaxsim, was not someone you crossed since she was an adept of Landa and eventually became High Priestess of the White Shrine. When she was elevated, I was a revered deputy running the day-to-day management of this shrine and flying in from Manse Gunndit every day. I think Katsa was four years old at the time."

"Really?" That was a surprise to me since Lisaykos hardly ever talked about herself. "I didn't know all that."

"I was sure I told you," she frowned. "Regardless, I loved my mother dearly, but I didn't dare cross her. She was the person I feared the most growing up. She was so strict. The worst was learning my table manners even before I learned to read; however, I was attending state banquets as a child, seated at the same table as my grandfather, Indesoep King, so I had to behave perfectly."

"Mugash have mercy," Losnana gave Lisaykos a sideways look, "did anyone ever let you have fun before you escaped to a shrine?"

Lisaykos gave Losnana a perplexed look, "fun? Oh, you mean fun." She was thoughtful, "let me think. I might have had fun once when I was eight, when my brother, Listay'odas, took me for a ride on his eagle. So, the answer is yes, I did have fun once."

I couldn't believe Lisaykos said all that without even twitching the hint of a ghost of a grin.