Maker of Fire

Aylem, Crystal Shrine, Planting Season, 3rd rot., morning of the 5th day

"I don't think I've ever seen you this upset over a precognition," my sore back prevented me from sitting up, which had been my initial reaction.

"I'm going to venture a guess," Kamagishi fussed with her teacup, sitting across from my lounge in my guest quarters in her white and red robes. "I think I may be reacting badly because I've gotten somewhat fond of the Blessed Emily."

"I can understand why you want to speak with her directly," I leaned my head back. Even my neck ached. I had more muscle soreness with this pregnancy than my first two. I inhaled deeply and continued, "I think you're on a wasted trip. I predict she will stop you from telling her what you and Losnana have seen. She won't want to know. She doesn't like it when her life has been predicted for her."

"How can you be sure about that?" Kamagishi looked surprised at my statement.

"It's my opinion based on how she was raised on Earth," I explained, "added to the strong contrarian streak in her personality. She was raised believing in free will. She thinks destiny is just a superstition for simple-minded and gullible people. And she hates for anyone to tell her what to do or what she's destined to do. I will bet you a firkin of that dark ale you like. What will you bet, Kamagishi?"

"Hmm," Kamagishi frowned in thought.

I got an itchy feeling in my head. I looked behind the lounge to see Kamagishi's mother and my live-in healer, Lyappis, making hand motions to catch her daughter's attention.

"Mom?" Kamagishi finally noticed her mother.

"What about what I showed you last night?" Lyappis replied with a knowing, conspiratorial smile.

"Are you sure, Mom?"

"It's about equal value to five firkins of ale," Lyappis purred.

"Oho!" I raised an eyebrow at Lyappis. "Are you suggesting I raise my half of the bet? What is this wonder you have?"

Lyappis got up from where she was knitting chainmail, "If you will excuse me for just a moment. I will go and fetch it." She exited my sitting room and returned with something wrapped in cotton canvas a few moments later. It was about the size of an adult Coyn's head. She sat down across from me and started to unwrap it.

"Remember when my grandson, Otty, stopped by last rotation?" Lyappis had a smug smile on his face, "He left this with me to show Imstay King when he visited you next."

The fabric fell away to reveal a lump of translucent fire opal of the best quality, shot through with red, green, and blue iridescence. It was easily worth ten firkins.

"Ten firkins would be fair compared with that, if that's what you will bet," I looked at Lyappis, already wondering how many fire opal tablets I could carve out of that rock.

"Done!" Lyappis grinned in triumph.

"You really think she will go against her nature and want to know the precognition?" I asked.

"I am an excellent judge of character," Lyappis stated with confidence, "and so is my daughter. I think her mekaner tendencies will be stronger than her contrarian nature and her distaste for the gods manipulating her life. I believe she'll try to determine the event kernel and then attempt to manipulate the rest of the events surrounding the kernel."

"Oh crapola," I smacked my forehead with my palm. "I didn't consider that. Can I back out?"

Lyappis smiled ever so sweetly, "No, Aylem dear, you may not."

Kamagishi laughed.

Emily, Sils'chk, Planting Season, 3rd-4th rotations

Every morning, I woke up brimming with ambivalence over what I was doing. When I consoled myself that I was just following the will of the gods, I wondered if what the gods wanted me to do was evil. My problem is that I sincerely believed that all war was immoral. Yet Erhonsay had sanctioned this war. Did that make Erhonsay, who I had come to admire, an evil god? Or was it possible that some war might actually be good? I was conflicted. Was I really mistaken about what was good or evil?

In short, I was a mess upstairs. Despite this, I taught the Chem how to identify and mine bog iron, which was abundant on the northwest extension of the Great Sussbesschem Swamp. I set up the first bloomeries and the first big blast furnace. Then I designed and helped build the three explosives factories.

The Chem proved to be the best students ever. They remembered most of what I told them. They understood complex concepts when those were explained well. Chem were never afraid to ask questions. I enjoyed their prowess at learning enough that I could forget for a bell or so that I was teaching these peaceful, happy people to maim and kill others.

The Chem blew me away with how they mined their bog iron. Artesian springs in the northwest arm of the Great Swamp deposited a shallow, hand-thick layer of yellow-orange goethite, iron oxyhydroxide, FeO(OH). The mineral cropped out along slough banks in the boglands. It was surprisingly pure, unlike the bog irons of the North American east coast that stretched along the coastal swamps from Virginia to Nova Scotia, but were concentrated around the coastal outlets of the Potomac, Delaware, and Hudson Rivers. The blast furnaces and bog iron from the pine barrens of New Jersey supplied the English colonies and the American Revolution with iron.

Bog iron ceased to be the primary source of iron before the American Civil War, with the discovery of better iron ores in Pennsylvania and upstate New York. Compared to the Pennsylvania and Adirondack ores that replaced them, east coast bog iron was full of silicate impurities in the form of ingrained sand and silt particles. The bog iron in Sussbesschem was much nicer, maybe because of the relative lack of sand-sized particles in the shales that cropped out locally.

The way the Chem mined was so thoughtful. The Chem built dams downstream of where they pried up the goethite layer. Those dams diverted waters filled with waste sediments into sedimentation basins to exit through filters towers packed with crushed shells. They did this on their own, without asking or telling me about it.

I found out later that the Chem did placer mining for gold and melanterite, so they already knew how to protect streams from sedimentation problems. They developed their sedimentation control to protect the beds of a popular scallop-like shellfish that's very sensitive to high turbidity, acidic shifts in water chemistry, and sulfate formation. Most of the sulfates I found were melanterite, FeSO4·7H2O, but some were jarosite, KFe3(SO4)2(OH)6, which surprised me since I thought the water chemistry was wrong for it.

Regardless of my confusion over the jarosite, my guess was that the local ground waters got a lot of exposure to marine shales in the subsurface. Marine shales can pack a lot of sulfides like pyrite in them. The sulfur leaches into the artesian aquifers and deposits at the surface as iron sulfate.

The Chem gathered the gold and kept it at the Temple at Sils'chk. They didn't use currency themselves but used it for trade with the Sea Coyn. The mineral melanterite formed in a sulfate-rich belt along with epsomite, gypsum, jarosite, chalcanthite, and travertine in a belt where freshwater met brackish. The width of the belt was only about half a wagon-day, but it had to be more than ten wagon-days long, inland and parallel to the northwest Sussbesschem coast. The Chem sold it as green acid rock to the Sea Coyn.

Melanterite was called green vitriol up until the birth of modern chemistry. The Chem built me a laboratory building where I could design the industrial processes to make our explosives ingredients. I used the copper retorts I bought in Gangkego and used them to dry distill the melanterite to produce sulfuric acid.

The shorelines of the more solid islands next to the ocean were full of seabird poop. I taught the Chem how to make saltpeter by dissolving bird poop in hot water and then adding the ashes leftover from the peat-fueled boilers the Chem use in their sugar plants. The ash is mostly potassium carbonate. The potassium in the ash and the nitrate ions from the bird poop react to form potassium nitrate, the essential nitrogen compound needed for all our explosives. The carbonates precipitate out. The saltpeter stays in solution. It's poured off and evaporated to get the saltpeter as a white crystalline solid.

Reacting saltpeter and sulfuric acid makes nitric acid. Now that I had both strong acids in my reach, I began to play with making gun cotton. The concept was simple: you mix sulfuric and nitric acid with any source of cellulose, like wood or sugar cane, then rinse the solid remains with cold water. The downside of making gun cotton was determining the right proportions and the safest method to make it. Gun cotton killed a lot of people in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries on Earth.

My fourth attempt to make gun cotton blew out the wall of my wattle-and-daub lab building and set the place on fire. A young ksh'g'lsh fishing nearby pulled me out of the burning lab. I was concussed, and the backs of my arms and legs were one big bruise.

I had set up a safety curtain made of layered strands of thick hemp rope. The curtain hung from the door jamb into the room where I reacted the reagents. Wearing foundry leathers and a hood with a thick mica visor, the blast threw me backward into the safety curtain. The rope curtain broke the force of the explosion and probably saved my life.

Most of my skin was protected by the leathers and hood. Still, the backs of my knees only had a thin layer of cotton stocking and undertunic over them above the tops of my boots. The cotton burned in the fire, leaving the backs of my legs burned, blistered, and painfully oozing blood, catalase, and other icky-looking stuff.

What was freaky was that I had no bruises or burns underneath Ud's magic shirt.

When my Chem rescuers got me back to our hut, I was set up to sleep on my stomach since I couldn't bear to have the burns on the backs of my legs touched. A quiet, worried Tom was cleaning the burns with water when Twalkt walked in with his satchel full of little ceramic bottles of medicines he made. I'm not sure what all the different potions did, but the one that reduced the pain only lasted about two bells. The bad part was that it couldn't be used more than four times a day.

Between the burn pain, the headache, and the nausea from the concussion, I was quite miserable.

Usruldes, Sils'chk, Planting Season, 4th rotation, 3rd day

"What on Erdos is that?" Moxsef asked. Out of the corner of my eye, it looked like something had fallen in the slough between the island of Sils'chk and the unnamed island where we Cosm were exiled. Cosm had to stay on the island with our quest quarters unless it was Planting Midday when we delivered the charm gems.

Then I saw the wake from a quickly swimming Chem. A mostly black kl'dr scrambled up on the bank and then, faster than I have ever seen a Chem move, sprinted up the hill toward us on all fours. As I guessed from the color, the kl'dr was Twee. I confirmed it as soon as I could see the yellow spots of which he was so vain.

Vanity wasn't on Twee's mind. He leaped into my lap, grasping me round the neck and startling Cadrees.

"Sssssscome, come, come now," Twee barked at me. "Sssemily hurt. Need healing magic."

"What about the rule that keeps Cosm off of Sils'chk?" I asked, concerned that Emily needed a healer. "What has happened?"

"Does it have anything to do with the smoldering wreck of a building two islands over?" Kamagishi asked as she slid off of the eagle Pibl.

"Sss...explosion," Twee bounced up and down, pulling on my riding cloak. "Sss...Emily blew it up. She was in it."

"How badly is she hurt?" a worried-looking Sutsusum asked from the back of Nedotl, her newly-freed and now-contracted griffin.

"Sssbanged head, skin bleeding, and burns. Need to heal Emily. No more no-Cosm rules for Foskos," Twee said quickly. "Come, Emily needs you, now."

"Alright, Twee," I clutched him to my chest and levitated off Cadrees. "Just point, and we'll fly there." Twee pointed at a group of huts on one side of the Well of Vassu with the fingers of his tail. I landed and put Twee down. Then I stripped out of my flying cloak and leggings as fast as I could, feeling the heat and humidity now that I was on the ground.

"Sssin here," Twee ran up to a hut and pulled open the door made of swamp cedar boughs.

"Twee?" Tom's voice floated out. "What's up? I finally got her to sleep." Tom stumbled out, looking like he hadn't shaved or changed his tunic for several days. I was a little shocked that he wasn't wearing stockings, hosen, or trews. I had to remind myself that Emily and Tom came from a place where showing the skin of your legs above the ankles was not considered indecent.

"It's you," Tom blinked at me. "Which name do I use today? Did you bring a healer?"

"Call me Irhessa for now. And I am a good healer. Even my mother will tell you that. Emily will be in good hands with me."

"But she's not dressed," Tom looked upset. He also looked like he was short on sleep.

"Tom, I heal people," I knelt to talk with him, putting a friendly hand on his shoulder. "Clothes get in the way, depending on the injury. Besides, I've seen Emily wounded and in a state of undress before. She has a knack for attracting trouble."

"But," Tom began, "but, but..." He shook his head. "Can you fit through the door?

"Looking at the hut, I'm not sure I can get inside," I eyed the open door, which was just tall enough for a Chem to fit through while walking upright. A nohair or even a short half-hair could fit, but the hut was not big enough for a silverhair. "I think we should move her to the Cosm quarters for a day or two, so I can heal her and take care of any follow-up healing she might need afterward. You should come, Tom. Maybe Twee, too, so the Chem don't get upset that we're kidnapping the Prophet."

"SssI will come too," an old kl'dr appeared. He was one of the oldest Chem I think I ever had met. He was so old that the red of his spots had faded, and the green scales under his chin had turned green-grey with age.

"Sssif I come along with Twee," the old Chem said, "there will be no protest. SssI am Twalkt, Shaman of Shwook, and Twee's stk'tl'stk."

So this was one of Twee's nesters. Because he was Twee's family, I touched the fingers of both hands to my nose and then held them out in the form of a formal first greeting between Chem. "I am known as Irhessa haup Gunndit, an agent of Imstay King haup Foskos. I also answer to Usurldes, which is what Twee calls me. May your fields and nets be full, Twalkt," I said in the water tongue.

"Sssand yours too, friend Irhessa," Twalkt returned the gesture and replied in the water tongue. "Let us bring Emily out, and then you can take her to your quarters."

"You're going to do what?" Tom's eyes were wide, and I could feel a protest gathering in his mind. I reached out and clasped his shoulder again, dropping a charm of peace on him.

"How much sleep have you had since Emily was hurt?" I asked him, distracting him as Twalkt and Twee entered the hut to get her. "When did the explosion happen?"

"It was three days ago, and you just cast a charm of peace on me," he accused in a detached voice. "I haven't slept much but I have gotten some sleep every night. Why?"

"Because you've exhausted yourself. You're worried, too," I explained. "You need to rest and recover, and let me do the work of fixing both of you. You won't be much help to her if you wear yourself out taking care of her."

"That sounds reasonable," his head drooped. "Hey," he looked up at Twee and Twalkt carrying Emily out on her sleeping pad, "at least put a blanket on her." Emily didn't have a single stitch of clothing on her. I was appalled at the bruises and the burns but intrigued by how her back and neck were unharmed.

"Surd save us," Sutsusum said as she landed next to the hut. "Fix those burns on the backs of her legs first, Lord Irhessa, before moving her. Those are nasty-looking." Moxsef and Kamagishi joined her, all three having levitated themselves to where Emily's hut was.

"I thought that Emily said her exploding potions were safe to make," Moxsef said with tones of obvious doubt.

"The ones she made and demonstrated in Foskos were relatively safe and stable if you use all of her safety measures," Tom responded, sounding still detached from the world. "She was trying to make a new type of explosive that's about ten times more powerful than what we used in Omexkel."

Sutsusum gasped, "I remember her saying that she knew how to make potions many times stronger than what destroyed her cave dwelling. But why?"

"Bigger bombs mean fewer dead and injured Chem," Tom replied. "That's what Emily is thinking. She hates war. Teaching the peaceful Chem to make war is tearing her up inside. She thinks that if she makes more destructive bombs, the war will be over faster, and fewer people will die."

"Blarg," I found myself saying. "Well, let's get those burns healed, and then I'll take her to our quarters myself."