Maker of Fire

Aylem, Healing Shrine of Mugash

Damn my temper and damn my occasional lack of control over my power. In a fit of anger, I thoughtlessly invoked the charm of a thousand stings and cast it on my oldest friend, Asgotl, and on Emily. I sometimes used it on Imstay and his cronies when he got out of hand. Cosm can survive a thousand stings but flying mounts and Coyn can not.

Because I was annoyed, I killed them through my thoughtlessness. I felt like flinging myself over the parapet. Lisaykos knelt next to the body that was once Emily. She felt Emily's cheek and then closed her still-open eyes. I could see the mental fortitude in Lisaykos build as she steeled herself to carry out her duty to cast the charm of endless sleep on me until my trial in the Well of Galt.

Wolkayrs, Thuorfosi, and Kayseo came running through the balcony doors. The strength of the charm I cast would have been felt by most of the healers and attendants on the south side of the shrine.

"What happened?" Wolkayrs asked, panting from running up the stairs. He didn't get an answer because, at that moment, the crystal in the Well of Mugash sent up a white light that penetrated the solid roof of the dome and lit up the sky.

"Look," Kayseo pointed. "There's a light from the Shrine of Sassoo." It was tinted green.

"And from the Shrine of Tiki," Thuorfosi added. The light from there was fainter since it was further away. If this had happened for three shrines, then it had happened at every shrine in the kingdom.

"Something is about to happen," Lisaykos said in a trembling voice, tears running down her face.

Something did happen: I screamed. That's because Mugash appeared in front of me. "You are a disappointment, Aylem." I was trapped by her eyes and read bottomless anger and sorrow there.

"For every day that the Blessed Emily must suffer, you will kneel on a bed of gravel in the Well of Mugash; your throne will be denied you and your magic will be sealed, both until Emily releases you. You will only eat and drink and rest from the seventh bell to the first bell. You will sleep on the floor or stand or kneel but you will not sit. No one may greet you and you may not greet others. You will speak only after being spoken to and your name shall be Wretched. Now Wretched, kneel." I couldn't help myself. I knelt.

Everyone else on the balcony was already kneeling in front of the goddess. That meant everyone saw my humiliation but that was probably the point. Mugash turned her back on me. She walked to where Lisaykos was kneeling next to Emily's body.

She bent over and put her hand on Lisaykos' head, "you can save her, my beloved daughter." Then she knelt on one knee next to Emily's body and placed her hand on Emily's head. "Emily, I name you Courage. Now breathe, child, and come back to us." The light of the crystal suddenly expanded in width and blinded everyone. Then it was gone, and so was Mugash.

Lisaykos fell over onto the tiles of the floor. Wolkayrs ran to her and shook her shoulder, "Mistress!"

"What?" Lisaykos blinked. Then realization spread across her face. "Oh my. Oh, Gods." She closed her eyes tightly for a moment, and when she opened them, there was wonder on her face. "How amazing." She took a deep breath and reverted to her usual no-nonsense self, calm, efficient, and decisive.

She struggled to get up, "there is much to do."

"Please," Wolkayrs held out his hands, "allow me to help you."

She looked at him blankly, and then she recovered herself. "You are a dear," she nodded and let him help her to her feet. "Kayseo, come here, please."

She ran over, "yes, Holy One?"

"Kayseo, you are well matched for this problem," she delivered her instructions without pause. "With every beat of her bruised heart, and I mean that literally---it is bruised---thousands of capillaries are bleeding. Start with Emily's brain and stop the bleeding. Brain, heart, lungs, liver, kidneys: that's the order you should use. After that, use your clairvoyance and your discretion."

"Wolkayrs, find Yutmuss. He's probably at the garrison. Ask him to please come and take care of this poor griffin."

That got my attention. Asgotl was alive? I was sure he died under the strength of my charm. He may never forgive me, but I was still glad and quite relieved he was alive. What was happening around me, though, was unprecedented. Mugash brought Emily back to life and then gave two revelations in a row: one to Lisaykos and one to Emily. The last time someone received more than one revelation was so long ago that it's considered just a legend. And it was Emily who received a second one. It was like the age of myth happening right now under our noses.

I wanted to go and help. My healing magic is strong, but then I remembered that Mugash sealed my magic. I held my hand out to make a light, and nothing happened. I could feel no magic move in me whatsoever. I could not even begin to make up for this disastrous mistake of mine by helping to heal my friends.

Mugash did not condemn me to death, which the law would have demanded. Given what I had just done, I would have preferred death. How could I even look Emily or Asgotl or Lisaykos in the eye ever again? The hole in my soul appeared bottomless, and I did not know how far I would fall or if I would ever stop falling.

I could not think of another time in my life when I felt as miserable as I did now at this moment. I also knew that my misery was nothing compared to what Emily would now endure. In a Cosm, the charm of a thousand stings fires off every peripheral nerve. It is as painful as a charm of discipline, though that charm merely creates the perception of pain. The charm of thousand stings affects the whole body. If applied for more than a few seconds, it would end in a grand mal seizure. It is a nasty little charm.

For griffins, it works the same way as in Cosm; but griffins aren't as robust, and the disruption of the nervous system usually results in death, as I thought it had in Asgotl. In Coyn, because the body mass is fifteen to twenty-five times less than Cosm, the energy floods all the nerves. The energy that is left over jumps to destroy the circulation of blood by bursting the small blood vessels and other cells next to peripheral nerves. The physical effect should not be survivable, unless, of course, a god decided otherwise.

The bleeding would be everywhere. If not stopped immediately, even with Emily alive, she would die in minutes unless the bleeding stopped. And if she lived, it would be a very long time before she would regain her health back. She would be a living bruise. I could only imagine the pain. Her amazing resilience and stubborn will would be her only advantages here.

There was no excuse for what I had done. At 34, I should be able to keep a lid on that damn temper of mine.

Yes, I think death would be preferable. It would be a long time before I would be able to live with myself. If I could end my life and leave this toil behind, I would do so.

What I had just done was unforgivable.

---

Lisaykos, Healing Shrine of Mugash

What Mugash had given me as a revelation was a new way to approach traumatic injuries. It could save thousands of millions of lives, starting with Emily. It was so clear and so simple that I was left wondering why no one had thought of this before.

I knew what I had to do.

"Thuorfosi, I want you to bring three, no, four healers who are good with soft tissue injury as fast as you can.

I returned to Emily who was beginning to turn dark red in blotches. The skin could wait. Preventing organ failure took precedence, followed by bone marrow, major muscles, and joints. I started with the eyes, which were red where they should have been white. Blood was pooling under the conjunctiva, which was something healing magic could not fix; however, I could stop the bleeding and did so. Her eyes would look horrific for at least one rotation.

I did the inner ears and the eardrums. I tackled the tongue and the sinuses. The stomach, intestines, colon, bladder, and womb were next. I was in the middle of the gall bladder when the additional healers arrived. I gave them and Thuorfosi directions on the order things should be healed and left them to do their work.

The restricted-use storeroom was across from my bedroom. I fetched two hollowed crystals, their carrying bags, two of the shrine's precious hollow needles, and the stretchy hollow vine from the glayon tree in several thicknesses. I cast the charm of purification on them to rid them of any disease and toxins. Then I set these items up in Emily's room and purified the whole room.

Someone knocked on my bedroom door. I opened it to find High Priestess Senlyosart of Sassoo, whose shrine was two and a half wagon-days to the south in Black Falls.

"I can't stop what I'm doing, sister, but you can talk to me while I am walking," I slipped past her into the hallway. She stopped me.

I was ready to order her out of my way when she said, "the Queen is out there and I think it best to hear what has happened out of her earshot."

"My apologies, sister. There is a life at stake here. I will tell you this and then I must do what only I can do. Mugash has appeared here. She has sealed the Queen's magic and pronounced punishment on her. In a fit of temper, the Queen killed Emily and injured her griffin. Mugash brought Emily back to life but she is still on the lip of death, and so I must go now."

I walked out to where Emily was surrounded by six healers, all laboring to stop the bleeding and the edema that could kill her. I tapped Kayseo on the shoulder. After a moment, she came up from her healing trance.

"Progress, Kayseo?" I asked.

"The fact that she is so small is a great help. With six of us and just one little Emily, we are almost done with controlling the hemorrhaging, but there will be some worrisome swelling, especially in her joints. There is also hemorrhaged blood in her muscle tissues with no path out and that will be extremely painful. The amount of pain she will experience may be enough all by itself to kill her." Kayseo calmly delivered her assessment. "She has lost a lot of blood and that too is worrisome. The pumping force is beginning to drop and that worries me since her temperature is also falling."

"We need to move her inside," I determined. "Kayseo, can you cast stasis?"

"I'm just a healer-in-training," she protested. "I'm not..."

"Kayseo," I interrupted her, "yes or no, can you cast stasis?"

"Yes, I can."

"I thought so. Let us disengage for now and move her." Kayseo nodded and we both began pulling the other healers back from their trances.

"Now Kayseo, I want you to cast as deep a stasis as you can muster," I directed her. She performed wonderfully, as I knew she would. She is a very talented young woman. Many hands lifted Emily and carried through the doors into the hallway and then into Emily's room through my bedroom. When she was placed on her own bed, which I had already stripped down to a mattress and bottom sheet, we got her out of her clothes to assess the state of her skin.

The sight of Emily bare was frightening. She was covered in large ugly dark red blotches which would be blue and purple by morning. She really did look like one huge bruise in the making, and that was just the damage to the epidermis. Even though much of the bleeding was stopped, she had already lost a great deal of blood from the system designed to circulate it. Without enough blood, the heart was in danger of failing. Most people who had bled this much usually died.

"Is it even possible to keep her alive with this much blood loss?" Thuorfosi asked in a worried voice.

(Continued in part 47)