Maker of Fire

(Continued from installment 3.43)

Kamagishi in the dreamspace, 7th rot., night of the 7th day, Foskos time

Emily at the Battle of Northport, 7th rot., 8th day, Souk time

I stared out the entrance of the cavern as the figures of Ud and Galt dwindled in the distance and disappeared into the trees. I shook my head in disbelief over the cat god chasing the spider mage like two children playing. I collected my thoughts and turned back to my new sister-to-be.

"Can you show me Emily and the Empress?" I asked Veronteegan.

"Take my hand so I don't lose you," she gestured. I put my hand in hers, and once again, the mists of the dreamspace closed in. Then, they parted, and we were on the steering platform of what looked like a Chem warketch, although it had a Coyn Crew. The ship was anchored about a tenth of a wagon day from a vertical escarpment of black rocks fractured into columnar patterns like those in the lava flows of the Great Cracks.

A tall silverhair sat on the deck while she sewed. Her back was to the mast closest to the steering lever, and Emily, another Coyn woman, and two Coyn men sat with her.

Maybe it would be more accurate to say that the silverhair was attempting to sew. She wasn't very good at it. She had to be the Exalted One, the Infanta Moo'upegan nu Mattakwonk, Empress Presumptive of Mattamesscontess. The Infanta looked vexed while Emily wore an expression of painfully endured patience.

"Ow!" The Infanta flinched and jerked the hand holding the fabric. "I feel like a pin block."

Emily sighed, and the other sitting Coyn traded looks.

"Maybe we should stop for now," the Infanta pleaded, looking at Emily. The other three Coyn looked at the Infanta with sympathy.

"You need to learn this, Moo," despite her juvenile appearance, Emily looked like a stern elder or school teacher chiding a difficult student. "Where we're going, you need this as a survival skill. It's not enough to—"

"I know," the Infanta interrupted. "After I hunt and kill my prey, I must know how to skin and taw the skins and then sew them together. I get it. But, Beloved, I can bond seams together with magic. I figured out a charm to do so last night." She sighed. "Please, can I stop now? I've told you this before. I'm not good with my hands. I'm probably the first nu Mattakwonk who is bad at every musical instrument and every refined craft considered suitable for the royal and noble houses. I'm a great patron, but I'm a lousy practitioner. My best skill is magic. Now, wouldn't the ever-practical Emily argue that we should rely on the skills we are the best at?"

The other three Coyn had carefully neutral expressions while Emily made an exquisite fish face.

"You invented a new magic charm last night? For making seams?"

"Actually, Beloved, it's better than seams," the Infanta smiled helpfully. "See? If I take my finger like this," she put the two pieces of fabric down side-by-side on her thigh and moved her finger in the space between, "they bond together and become one piece of fabric without a seam." She held up the newly unified piece of fabric and beamed, looking proud of herself. "I'm good at inventing handy charms, mostly to make up for being a klutz. People think I'm such a talent, but what I really am is uncoordinated."

Emily held her head in her hands and shook it. "You invented a magic to avoid sewing. Surd save us all. You're incorrigible!"

The Infanta laughed. "One and seven-eights," she said. "That would be fifty-seven in the new numbers."

"Blarg!" Emily exclaimed. The other three Coyn smiled their amusement. I concluded there was an in-joke here behind those looks.

"Do you know what that was about, Sister Veronteegan?" I asked my guide.

"This is the fifty-seventh time that the Beloved of the Gods has told the Exalted One that she is incorrigible," Veronteegan displayed her own smile of amusement. "She's been keeping count to tease the Prophet. It's good that the Prophet is tolerant of the teasing. She would be too serious otherwise. That little one is often too solemn for her own good." Veronteegan exhaled a humph, "The Beloved Emly could stand to lighten up."

That made me laugh. "Yes, little Emily doesn't have much of a sunny outlook on life. She's a strange one."

"I can't argue with that," she nodded. "Wait, I see the signal from the crews that landed two days ago."

"That was a firework!" I saw the bright orange blossoms in the sky above the Cliffs of Gong. "But what crews? I have no idea what's happening," I remarked.

"Ah!" Veronteegan smacked her forehead with her hand. "Of course, you don't. You haven't been able to watch the Prophet on her travels like I have. The Coyn of Souk and their nearest neighbor Zaleka landed twenty trebuchets at the base of those cliffs two nights back. Then, they anchored their little fleet about a wagonday to the southwest. The crews scaled the cliffs, and the Infanta levitated the weapons and casks small enough for Coyn to carry to the top clifftops on either side of the hidden entrance to the pirate port. The entrance is almost impossible to see from a ship. It's narrow and hides a twisting channel into a bowl-like harbor with moorings for fifteen ships, eight longhouses, and a number of shacks for thralls."

"Thralls?" I asked.

"Cosm slaves, mostly Korakorans and other Islanders."

"Disgusting," I remarked.

"Slavery of Chem, Coyn, and Cosm is legal in Mattamesscontess, though few besides the wealthy and nobles can afford them," she replied in a flat voice. "Many Cosm are sold into slavery to pay off debts."

"Uhg, debt bondage," I snarled. "That's also disgusting."

"I won't argue with you over that," Veronteegan frowned. "But the Prophet said the gods mean to abolish the practice."

"They do," I replied. "I have a hard time envisioning a world without it because that's all I have ever known. We don't enslave Cosm in Foskos, but none of the other intelligent races are free – at least, not yet."

"I heard that the slave riots in Impotu have been terrible, with thousands dead and cities set on fire," Veronteegan said.

"Well, parts of cities," I responded. "But the worst violence has been at large labor camps of Coyn farm slaves who—"

My remark was cut off by a flash of light, a loud rumbling, and the same sort of ugly orange and black billowing smoke and fire that one sees from granary explosions. A part of the cliff collapsed into the water, blocking the hidden entrance to the harbor.

"So that's why the Infanta and the Prophets made holes at the bottom of the cliff and had the boat crews pack them with a black powder," Veronteegan said. "Those rocks block the entrance to the hidden harbor."

"Black powder?" I asked. "Was it made from niter, charcoal, and sulfur?"

"Yes. How did you know?"

"It's an invention of the Prophet's. She originally made it to help her mine the black ore for iron."

"Ah! The Soukans and Zalekans filled ten ships with that black powder. They spent a rotation making it and putting it into casks. The Zalekans mine and sell sulfur so they could make a lot of the powder."

"So I take it that all the casks that the Coyn landed were filled with the black exploding powder?" I asked rhetorically.

"No." Veronteegan surprised me with her answer, "They filled many casks with flour, and others with quicklime into which they inserted a sealed pot of the black powder with a fat wick sticking out. The Prophet suggested they make them."

"That's . . . that's . . ." Once again, I was horrified by Emily's cruel genius for inflicting suffering despite her protestations that she abhorred violence and war.

"That little thing? She has made other weapons like this?"

"Oh yes, she has a talent for it. Surely, you have heard about the destruction of Salicet?"

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"Yes, I know," Veronteegan looked thoughtful. "I heard about it after it happened and then from the Beloved Emly herself. Oh, look," she pointed. "A boat. Those must be the Coyn who set off the explosion."

I looked and saw a Coyn-sized cutter rowing from the shore near the explosion site toward the warketch. Then I saw Emily and the three other Coyn circle the mortar.

"Let's try one of the tin shells, Nargo," Emily directed. "Set the angle for eleven pi-hundreds, Blurgel. Let's see what the maximum range will be with these new shells."

The older of the two Coyn men lit the fuse of the shell that the younger one held just above the mouth of the mortar. The younger dropped the shell into the black tube, and to my surprise, everyone covered their ears and ducked. Then, as I watched a brownish ring of gas explode out of the mortar along with the shell, I understood why. Did the mortar do that at the fireworks demonstration almost a year ago? I didn't remember, but it was also dark at the time.

I heard the sound of a distant explosion.

"You hit this longhouse," the still-seated Infanta pointed at a rectangle on a map. She had unrolled it when the Coyn got up to man the mortar. The linen map was drawn in ink. "It has a large hole in the roof and wall," she added. "It looks like a fire has started on the inside. People are running out of it. Some of them are injured. Oh, casks are now falling. Most of them are not exploding. No, there's one. Yes, there's another. The ones that didn't explode hit the ground hard enough that the quicklime still got sprayed into the air. More are falling now."

While the Infanta narrated events in the harbor, Emily knelt next to the map with a marked rule and made some measurements. She consulted a table written out on vellum and pasted to a board. Then, she furiously scribbled on a wax tablet.

"Three and a three-quarter pi-hundreds to the west, Blurgel," Emily ordered. "Don't change the vertical."

The second shell went flying, and we all heard the sound of another explosion.

"You hit the longhouse two over from the first one you hit, here," the Infanta pointed.

"Show me where on the roofs of the two longhouses the shells fell?" Emily asked.

"But the roofs aren't there anymore," the Infanta protested.

"Moo, just imagine the roofs are still there. Where did they hit, please?"

"Here and here," two fingers descended. They covered most of the rectangles on the map.

"Moo, use my stylus," Emily growled. "Your fingers are too big."

"Sorry," said the chastened Infanta. She took the stylus and pointed, "Here and here."

"Thank you." Emily whipped the rule back out, measured between the two places the Infanta indicated, and then repeated her tasks with the table and tablet. "One and seven-eights to the east, Blurgel."

After the third explosion, the Infanta reported, "The amount of powdered quicklime in the air is making it hard to see now, but you got the longhouse between the first two you hit. People are now screaming about their eyes."

"Damn," I said to Veronteegan. "It's doing what I thought it would do. Remind me never to get on little Emily's bad side."

"I'll do that," Veronteegan quickly agreed.

I didn't hear Emily's next set of instructions to the mortar shooters, but after the next explosion, the Infanta grinned like a little kid up to no good. "You exploded this ship," she impaled a ship symbol in the anchorage with her sewing needle, "and the debris from the explosion set this one," stab, "and this one," stab, "and this one," stab, "on fire."

"Turn three and a quarter west and ten and fifteen-sixteenths from vertical, Blurgel," Emily ordered. Then she grinned up at the Infanta, "So far, this is going better than we planned, Moo."

"Don't jinx it, little one," Moo winked.

The pop of the mortar was followed by another explosion. The sound of more explosions followed.

"This ship here was hit," the Infanta moved her needle, "and these four to the east are on fire. The cask bombs are now falling on the longhouses. Someone there is now putting out the fires."

"Dammit, it's too soon," Emily frowned. "Time to get nasty. Captain Willis, shoot the signal for the flour casks. Blurgel, set the vertical to three pi-hundreds." Blurgel adjusted the mortar angle. The older man selected a brass shell from a wood crate, lit the fuse, and dropped it into the mortar. A blossom of glowing blue exploded overhead between the ship and the shore.

"Let's target more ships while we wait," Emily instructed. Blurgel, back to ten and fifteen-sixteenths, please."

"Flour?" I had to voice my question. "Why flour?"

"Let's go see what the harbor looks like," Veronteegan suggested, so we did.

The scene was one of mayhem and not for those with queasy stomachs. Veronteegan looked sick to her stomach. I wondered how that worked while one was dreamwalking. Every longhouse had taken damage. Chunks of bloodied bone-in meat were strewn between the hundreds of mangled and burnt bodies. Some of the chunks were still attached to skin or a recognizable body part like a hand or rib. Spattered pieces of lungs, livers, and intestines were everywhere. I didn't recognize the many other fragments of human offal. The nausea hit me after I spied half a head with its spilled brains on the ground. A handful of bloodied survivors sat or lay on the ground, sobbing or moaning, with tears spilling from their clouded eyes.

"I've seen battlegrounds before, but this is something beyond," I remarked as I watched casks shower down from the trebuchets hidden in the trees at the heights surrounding the harbor. The casks landed, spewing flour into the air. Soon, the waterfront was shrouded in a flour fog.

"Why does the flour go airborne?" I wondered aloud. "Why doesn't the flour just stay with the remains of the cask it was in?"

"When the Coyn made the flour casks, she had the coppers use leather in place of the pot metal hoops," Veronteegan explained. "The staves were deliberately not shaped completely so the casks would burst apart when they hit the ground. She also had the casks filled less than halfway. You see, if the casks are too full, the flour won't disperse to make a cloud."

"But why make a cloud out of flour?" I pondered. I knew I was missing something.

"In the Empire," Veronteegan responded, "it is against the law to fill flour sacks and barrels anywhere near a fire or coal pot. Do you not do the same in Foskos? If you don't, how do—"

Before she could finish her sentence, the world exploded. The fireball passed through our dreamwalking selves and traveled onward, knocking down and igniting everything in its path, including the remaining undamaged pirate longboats.

We saw the flames go out on the three Cosm ships still afloat. Four surviving silverhairs, all women, levitated to meet on the one closest to the now-blocked channel out of the harbor. After they conferred briefly, the most injured mage stayed on the ship while the other three flew upward. A green firework exploded over the sea. Two flew toward it and the warketch, which they wouldn't fail to see. The third flew toward the heights to the west after spotting the launch of cask bombs.

"Quick, to the Beloved," Veronteegan directed, and then we were there. The Infanta was missing from the deck of the ketch, though her coat, overtunic, and boots were in a pile under the steering lever thing. Emily was fussing with the closed end of the cannon, stuffing a long, thin needle into a hole. The younger man was standing next to the mortar tube with a tin shell and the coal pot in his hand, scanning the horizon. The rest of the crew was crouching behind the gunwales, ready with their bows. I noticed every archer wore heavy gloves covering their arms past the elbow. Each had arrows waiting in a pot with a brown paste inside.

"Oh, that's the poison paste the Coyn towns make from the blue mantle plant for whale hunting. They put it on the ends of their whaling harpoons," Veronteegan commented. "If those arrows hit the mages, they are dead."

"How so?" I had to know.

"Paralysis. Because the poison affects all the muscles, either the hearts stop instantly from large doses, or you die from suffocation from slowly losing the ability to breathe from smaller doses."

We watched as two pirate mages flew toward the ketch from the cliffs along the shore despite their obvious wounds and burns. The Coyn archers took aim as they came within range and loosed a volley of poisoned arrows. The older of the two silverhairs stopped and cast a barrier charm against which the arrows clattered to a stop and fell into the water.

"Coyn? I can't believe it. Northport was destroyed by Coyn? You're all dead, and we'll ravage your five filthy towns for this," the younger shouted. She began to focus on casting a charm when the Infanta erupted out of the water behind the two mages. The two pirates went limp and fell into the sea, disappearing under the waves.

A drenched Moo'upegan looked at the crew as she floated off the railing. "Those two won't be a problem anymore," the Infanta said, looking grim and just a touch sad.

"Noooooooooooo!" A silverhair with arrows stuck in her canvas sailor's tunic came flying out of the west as fast as a roc eagle, with a Coyn arrow in her hand. She collided with the Infanta and stabbed her in the chest. Moo'upegan nu Mattakwonk fell into the water.

"And you miserable, filthy gerweasels," the silverhair screamed in rage, "you will suffer for that." She clutched the focus crystal on a pendant around her neck and cast the charm of discipline on the entire crew. Everyone fell to the deck, helpless in pain. Two of the archers knocked over their poison paste pot and were splashed with the toxin. They were dead in moments.

Then I watched as Emily staggered to her feet, resisting the charm of discipline for the third time through the force of her amazing will. She picked up the dropped coal pot and applied it to the fuse sticking out of the closed end of the cannon.

My ears hurt from the roar of the loud bang, and I watched a spray of pot shards and metal fragments flay first the skin and face, then the muscles, organs, eyes, skull, ribs, and bones off the mage, who then fell into the sea.

The Infanta levitated herself out of the water to collapse on the steering deck. Emily staggered over to her.

"Can you pull the arrow out, Emly?" Moo'upegan smiled sadly at the little Coyn. "I can't feel or move my hands and feet, so you must do it for me. I can stop the bleeding as you pull it out."

With tears streaking down her face, Emily stood up, grabbed the arrow, and tried to remove it. She failed, braced a foot against the Infanta's side, and tried and failed again. The man called Willis stepped up behind Emily and yanked the arrow out.

"A wounded silverhair is resting on one of the surviving ships in the harbor. She may have healing magic. It's worth a try," Moo'upegan calmly said. "Captain, can you head for shore? Quickly, please?" She looked at Emily, "Stay with me, little one? I will now cast stasis on myself. I look forward to seeing you again when I wake up." She smiled and then tranced. Her eyes closed, and she spoke no more.

Emily lifted Moo'upegan's hand into her tiny lap and caressed it, silent as she wept. Then, as Willis revived his crew and sailed the ketch to the beach, Emily's expression slowly changed into a grimace of rage. She said aloud to no one in particular, "No. No more of this." Her aura suddenly flashed silver, and Galt's godmarks glowed in her eyes. The rest of the godmarks circled her head in a halo.

I felt my sense of the constant progression of time collapse as I sat up in my bed, in my dark bed chamber at the Fated Shrine, screaming in pain as the future vanished.