Maker of Fire

Aylem, Crystal Shrine, Weirgos, Kas, Growing Season, 6th rot., 7th-9th days

War on Erdos is a cascade of activities separated by long periods of not much happening. The gathering of the Chem of Toyatastagka took days. Imstay was still bogged down at the siege of Suapsepso. Lord Bobbo was busy consolidating his position and firming up his supply lines. I watched his secret attack force in private with just Foyuna. We kept an eye out for any Impotuan forces that might spot his troops.

I had overheard Lord Bobbo’s wish for sulfur. Given the abundance of sulfur we had in Foskos, with the huge deposits outside of Kesmat and Kas, I decided to help him out. I didn’t need to tell him just how closely I was able to eavesdrop inside his command tent. I could pin my interest in sulfur instead on his agents, who were not exactly invisible as they tried to buy up all the sulfur in the Salicet region.

I think I frightened Lugasha, Mother of Nesters, when I mindcasted her. I keep forgetting that I’m the exception when it comes to mind magic. I believe finding her by clairvoyance and then talking directly to her mind may have been a first for the eagles.

*Lugasha? Lugasha?* I was sitting on my lounge under the great dome of the Crystal Shrine, watching her in her aerie on a mountain side in the Gos River Valley, deep in the Blue Mountains.

“Squaaaaaack!” Lugasha screamed in fright. “Waaaaaats that? Who’s there? Where? Where?”

*My apologies, Lugasha. This is Aylem, Queen of Foskos. I did not mean to startle you. I am mindcasting to you from the Crystal Shrine of Tiki.*

“Aylem Queen you scared me,” Lugasha spoke out loud, causing her aerie mates to stare. “I did not know a Cosm mage could mindcast this far.”

*There is only one other mage that can do so, Lugasha, I explained. This is not the norm for most mages. Lugasha, I want to know if Foskos could hire the services of two hundred eagles to make a delivery to my kingdom’s southern army?*

“What sort of delivery?” Lugasha asked. “From where? To where? And why?”

*We are sending a surprise attack force to Kipgapshegar. The Prophet has devised a new weapon using sulfur. I wish to deliver as much sulfur as two hundred eagles can carry to the attack force. They will use it against the defenders of that city. What can we trade or do for you for this service?*

“Against Kipgapshegar? The summer capital of the Imputation Empress, who is there now?” Lugasha said, and then squawked an eagle’s laugh. “Aylem sister, we need no reward except lend us some of your mages to help watch our nests. We will need to send some of our parents to carry your delivery. We have eaglets who need watching, aeries to defend from predators, and beasts to hunt to feed our young. Some of your holy people from the Shrines of Sassoo and Erhonsay would be welcome to help us while we lend your our wings.”

*Consider it done, Sister Lugasha. How many hands do you need? I may need to bring in mages from the Healing Shrine of Mugash to bring my numbers up.*

“Two hundred. This year’s hatching is close to fledging and they need a lot of feeding. Send mages and mounts who can hunt. We will send our eagles when they arrive. Where do we pick up the sulfur?”

*At the river landing in Kas. I will send someone to guide you. Also, the mages I will send to your aeries will each bring a sheep. That will help with the feeding of your young.*

“I thank you for that, Aylem sister.”

I bid farewell to Lugasha and dropped my vision trance. “How late is it, Foyuna?” I asked.

“Just before the first night bell. What did you discuss with the Queen of Eagles?” Foyuna asked. Neither Foyuna nor the priestess on recording duty were privy to my deal making with Lugasha.

I described the arrangements I made with Lugasha, and then sighed. “Now, Foyuna, I must contact your cousin Lisaykos, your mother, and the Holy Senlyosart. I need to ruin their plans for the next few days. I may get an earful from all of them.”

“My mother will never complain if it is in the service of the kingdom,” Foyuna was just a tad defensive.

“Of course, she won’t, dear heart,” I told her, “but I’ve known your mother long enough to know she doesn’t like to be woken up once she’s gone to bed. And I know she’s in bed by now, which is why my ears are soon to be bruised.”

Foyuna laughed, “Yes, you’re right about that.”

I decided that the occasion required my personal presence. I had my two hundred mages assemble at the Shrouded Shrine of Vassu because it was closest to the aeries of the roc eagles. I met them at the first day bell in Weirgos. As soon as the obeisance was finished, the Holy Moxsef rounded on me with a face full of discontent.

“The sheep will be ready before the second bell, Great One,” Moxsef began. “I had to borrow shearers from the Manse to get them ready to go.”

“Shearers?” I was surprised.

“Those sheep have a season’s growth of wool on them,” Moxsef stated. “It’s still not a full coat but I’ll not lose the value of that wool. The only reason I was able to deliver 200 sheep right away was because I raided my wool flocks, not my meat flocks. My meat flocks are already depleted by requisitions from the southern army.”

“We could use a few years without any floods, blizzards, wars, invasion, or wildfires,” I replied. “We need to rebuild our flocks and herds throughout the kingdom.”

“You forgot drought,” Moxsef said with a helpful voice and a face like a stone wall. She didn’t even blink as I was gobsmacked by what she said. Was she serious?

Then Moxsef smirked and shook her head, “Sister Kamagishi’s right. You really do need to learn to have fun. A straight line like that would have put Sister Foyuna into bed to recover from hilarity. You? You just looked at me as if I was a heretic from Mattamukmuk.”

The sour Moxsef was jesting? Moxsef?

“My mother’s always slow on getting jokes, Holy One,” my darling Opa appeared in her red ochre and grey flying clothes. She made a perfect bowing obeisance appropriate from the occasion, “May the blessings of the eleven gods be upon you, Sacred Ones.”

“And upon you too, Trainee Opa’aba,” I said to my girl. Her hair was more silver now than not, though she did start going silver when she was ten. She would have high priestess-quality magic when she was done growing.

“If you will excuse me for a moment, Sister Moxsef,” I picked up my Opa off her feet and spun her around, “I need to assault a trainee of Sassoo.”

“You know where to find me,” Moxsef politely vanished.

When I was done hugging my kid, I put her on her feet and then tried to sound stern, “You are going to look after eaglets?”

“No, Mother,” Opa rolled her eyes at me, “The Holy Senlyosart picked me as the guide for the eagles to take them from their aeries in the mountains to the loading docks in Kas.”

“Oh,” I was flummoxed by the teenager again. “That’s not so bad, I guess.” I really didn’t know what to say that wouldn’t sound stupid to my well-adjusted, socially-adept daughter.

“Wowzers, Mom, you’re being denser than usual today,” the kid gave me the suffering-child look.

“Yes, Opa, yes,” I felt nagged. “I’m afraid I’m not very good at all this social stuff. I’m so good at saying the wrong sort of thing that I try to say as little as possible all of the time.”

“That’s pathetic, Mom,” Opa gave me a look of disgust. “What’s with the crappy self-esteem? You need to spend some positive reinforcement time with Granny Lyappis.”

Yes, Opa was back to her whiny know-it-all brat routine. I might have been angry with her attitude but she had a good point. My confidence was still fragile.

“That’s good advice, dearest,” I patted Opa on the shoulder. “I’ll look into it when this is over. But for now, we need to wrangle the sheep and get these folks into the air to the Valley of the Gos River.”

My darling daughter rolled her eyes with all the mighty exasperation that only adolescents can muster. “Ew! Did you just pat me on the shoulder, Mom? I’m not a little kid, you know.”

“But you are such a cute little girl,” I said in that voice mothers use when talking to infants. “Such a dear little one,” I cooed at Opa while stepping in front of her and looming over her. She may have been pushing eighteen hands, but I was twenty-two hands and a half finger tall.

“Mom?” Opa meeped at me in panic, her eyes wide. She took a step back to avoid my pregnant stomach as I loomed.

“Eda-wada-foo-foo,” I talked baby talk at my obliging daughter, who was looking more nervous by the breath. “Poor widdle wookums,” I picked Opa up by her armpits and rubbed my forehead against hers.

“Mom!” Opa’s whine of consternation was music sweeter than hymns to Sassoo. I noticed the smiles hidden behind hands on the mages surrounding us and politely pretending not to overhear our conversation.

After the two hundred mounted mages left for Eagle Territory, Asgotl and I took a leisurely flight to Kas, stopping first at the nearly-finished road between Kas and Kesmet.

The new road was a marvel. To build the road, I hired two thousand of Moxsef’s spoot slaves. I allocated a thousand to the Hospitable Shrine of Gertzpul to clear the route of the new road. Those Coyn did not disappoint.

Sutsusum came up with a conniving idea right after Kayseo’s wedding. The High Priestess of Gertzpul spoke with the crew bosses for the spoot slaves, all of whom were from Aybhas. She told them her shrine would set them free early if they could clear the route before the Growing Midday Festival.

One Coyn woman countered that the Coyn on their own lacked the standing and assets required to clear a route over lava. Therefore, the proposition was a winner’s bet for Sutsusum because the Coyn could only lose. So, what did the Shrine win from the failure of the Coyn? Perhaps a frenzy of Coyn labor expended on the road? The Shrine would lose nothing if the Coyn failed. In the unlikely case that the Coyn succeeded, the Shrine gained a completed road over lava ahead of schedule. Why should the Coyn break their backs on a wager they couldn’t win?

“If I provided the tools and the budget and a few mages so you could clear the route, what then?” asked Sutsusum, dangling a great big bait, but deliberately withholding knowledge of concrete.

Sutsusum’s bait was all it took. The first thing the Coyn road builders did was hire twenty eagles—but no riders—from a livery company. The eagles were hired to prep the route over the west side of South Twin Butte. The Coyn directed the eagles pick up boulders, fly them to the places on the butte with the most rubble, and drop them from a height. The boulders usually broke into many smaller rocks and crushed the basalt underneath. The boulders that didn’t break were pushed off the road route by crews of Coyn.

The eagles flattened most of the route over the butte in less than a rotation. After the Coyn crews cleared all the loose rubble, the route was ready for fill. The fissures, blocky lava, and collapse craters on the apron of South Twin Butte had to be filled. Laying the ballast for the road required all the voids be filled beforehand.

Sutsusum was a happy high priestess with the road building ahead of schedule. When the contract with the eagles expired, she rehired them. She wanted the eagles to carry loads along the new route during construction, especially the concrete. The only problem was the speed with which the Coyn had cleared the route. The concrete plant wasn’t complete yet. During the two rotations it took Huhoti to finish the concrete plant, Sutsusum and Raoleer had the road clearing Coyn prepping the sites for the towers for the new bridge. It would be the first ever suspension bridge anywhere on Erdos.

The other thousand Coyn were split. Two hundred were under the supervision of my own staff from the Villa, to set up a cattle and dairy operation. Because of two Foskan armies were in the field, the kingdom’s resources were strained. I had to lend the treasury 1200 steer out of my own herd. I also bought 160 dairy cows. One steer will feed 200 Coyn and one dairy cow can feed 13 Coyn daily.

The meat and dairy products would keep our Coyn workforce fed. We would need to rely on the rose hips to keep the hunger disease at bay, at least until the first of the vegetables were harvested. I regretted that Emily was off helping the Chem because I wanted to quiz her on what sorts of foods had vitamin C in them, since Foskos did not have any citrus fruits. I did make a note to ask Ashansalt if we could grow citrus trees in the southern half of the kingdom. If we can grow olives, then we should be able to grow citrus. I would need to do a search for citrus trees we could import.

The remaining 800 Coyn were dedicated to gathering and transporting the raw materials for making cement and concrete. I put my staff from the brewery at the Villa to work organizing the transportation problems since the materials came from several different source areas. I regretted that Py’oask, now known as Tom, was off with Emily. He was the best at arranging wagon logistics. It took three of my Villa employees to replace him. The Building Shrine of Giltak was responsible for constructing the cement plant at Omexkel and the concrete plant north of Kesmet. No one anticipated that the road clearing Coyn would finish preparing the route before Raoleer’s mekaners finished the concrete plant.

After Sutsusum gave me a brief tour of the new road, I waited at the Peaceful Shrine of Erhonsay in Kas for the eagles to arrive. The dour Irralray was thoughtful enough to have a pasture of 200 goats waiting for the visiting eagles. She also gave Raoleer the use of all her staff and trainees to move and then package the sulfur from the pit mines west of Kas. It was just before the sixth bell when the eagles arrived. Lugasha led them, following my daughter on her griffin Rialdiaj. The eagles and my daughter would spend the night. The eagles would then leave at first light. The trip to where they would meet up with Lord Bobbo would take an entire day. I had yet to warn Bobbo I had a delivery for him.

Irralray did another thoughtful thing. She opened the main doors into the Well of Erhonsay, which were tall enough for an eagle to enter. Then she invited any of the visiting eagles to visit the Shrine. Of course, Lugasha took her up on the invitation. I demonstrated how the crystals worked and how they linked the shrines together if one had the clairvoyant talent to use them.

I confess I had to show off a little. I linked the Great Crystal to the crystal in the Well of Erhonsay, a feat that I learned to do since my magic lessons with Ud. Then I showed Lugasha the location where Bobbo’s fast attack force was hiding in the high peaks to the southwest of Kipgapshegar. I found Lugasha’s amazement quite gratifying. Even Irralray was impressed.