(continued from installment 95: Emily, Royal Pavilion, Tent City as Black Falls)

I breathed in, held it for a count of ten, and let it slowly out, trying to relax the tension I felt. "Imstay King, w...will you please put a guard of four silverhairs around the Queen's tent. No one goes in or out, not even the cleaning staff, without the approval first of one of the folks in this tent right now, and I w...want that to extend to Aylem too. We can't let whatever is going to happen just happen. We should try to intervene and control it if we can. And we should tell Aylem too. If she knows something is coming, she has a better chance of dealing w...with it in a manageable fashion."

"Are you sure about that?" Lisaykos asked. "I would want to try to shield her from..."

"No," it erupted from my mouth before I could stop myself. This was bad. I was too underslept to keep myself from speaking before I had time to consider what I wanted to say.

"I noticed," Imstay said ruefully. Then he blushed and looked at me with contrition, "sorry, I didn't mean to be that rude."

"Well, now we all know how underslept I am. Usruldes, Lisaykos, can you two please give me an evaluation of how rested everyone is?" I requested. Just because I didn't have magic didn't mean I couldn't ask others to use theirs. "I think w...we are all tired and stressed and not at our best."

"I got enough sleep," Usruldes said. "You need a lot more rest," he pointed at me. "Our two high priestesses are as tired as you in terms of how much blue fatigue they are displaying but they both have reserves of stamina that you lack. Imstay King needs to be tied down to a bed and made to sleep. He's in the solid blue stage of fatigue."

"I will concur with those assessments," Lisaykos said with a weary sigh. She held her hand up in front of her face. "Yes, I can see the blue haze on myself, which is never a good sign. I will also confirm that Usruldes is not at all tired right now."

"So, the first thing w...we need to do is put the king to bed," I said.

"No, I have too much to..." His head dropped and he started snoring lightly. Lisaykos put her crystal back in her side pocket. Usruldes got up, picked up Imstay, and took him to the sleeping chamber. He reappeared and sat back down.

"Usruldes, y...you are the best-slept person right now," I said. "Can you take care of guards for the queen, ones who can at least have a chance at explaining things to her in case she w...wakes up before we catch on?"

He closed his eyes for a long moment and then looked at me. "Four of my wraiths will be on station before you have time to finish your tea."

"I already finished...," I started to say but Garki materialized at my elbow and refilled my beaker. Behind his mask, I could see the crow's feet crinkle at the corners of Usruldes' eyes. Damn ninja.

"Usruldes is now in charge until the king w...wakes back up in a rested state," I said.

"Oh gods," Kamagishi held her head. "Everything just rearranged."

We waited until her golden eyes refocused and her rate of respiration dropped back to something resembling normalcy.

"The trauma and the crisis remains but the flight threat doesn't exist anymore whatsoever," Kamagishi said in wonder.

"Interesting. I think the t..two of you should try to catch a nap somewhere nearby," I pointed to Kamagishi and Lisaykos, "w...within earshot."

"What are you going to do?" Lisaykos asked suspiciously. Damn her. She knows me too well.

"I am going to get some big cushions and put them inside the entrance to Aylem's tent and take a nap. W...while I'm doing that, Usruldes is going to make me a kite."

"I am?" he asked.

"Yep."

"I need to schedule the king's second bell meeting for this afternoon first," Usruldes said, "and make some other changes to the King's schedule."

"W...hen you have the chance, please?" I did my innocent smile at him. He wasn't fooled. Dammit. These folks were on to all my formerly effective tricks.

"Wow," Kamagishi got wide-eyed again. "The crisis part is suddenly not a big deal anymore."

"Fascinating," I looked at Kamagishi and saw all sorts of interesting things I wanted to try with a powerful precognisant. The possibilities started to unfold in front of me. "W...hen? Can you pick the moment it changed?"

"When you said you would nap in Aylem's tent."

I leaned forward so much I almost lost my balance but Lisaykos reached over and caught me. "Thanks," I smiled at Lisaykos and focused back on Kamagishi. "Alright, now that the extraneous events tied to the trauma have been minimized, can y...you see the event yet that triggers the trauma?"

"It doesn't work like that," she protested.

"Try," I urged. "Precogs can see simple events so if w...we simplify complex events down to their causes, it stands to reason that the most talented precogs should be able to see the kernel of the causal event."

"I think I'd feel more comfortable if you would at least blink, Emily," Kamagishi said in a tiny scared voice.

I blinked. "There. Happy?"

She laughed, "you are too much." Then she sat back and tranced. We all tried not to make noise, even Garki, who was watching with big round eyes.

Kamagishi opened her eyes and looked at me intently. "It's her daughter. She's here. She's a trainee at this shrine."

"What?" Lisaykos sat up. "We need to wake Imstay about this. We can let him sleep afterward."

"Go for it," I said. "Did you know about this, Usruldes?"

"Yes, I did but we took care to keep Opa away from the royal encampment. Imstay hasn't had the right opportunity to tell Aylem yet since we haven't been back long and we've been a bit busy ever since."

Suddenly, we all felt Ud. Obviously, the neighborhood spider monster had been listening in.

* That makes so much sense. Before you left the Fenlands, I had my suspicions it might be either Imstay or her daughter or both that caused her to run away. *

"Surd save us," Lisaykos went white as she thought of something. "One of the memories that Mugash made Aylem live through during her punishment..."

"Yes?" Kamagishi urged.

"It was her daughter's fear of Aylem after watching Aylem lose her temper and attack Imstay. Aylem didn't know that her daughter had seen that and was afraid of her."

"Oh crappola," I had just realized that Opo'aba's troubles with Aylem might parallel Jane Paxton's troubles with her alcoholic mother in Coventry. These patterns often repeated each generation. Did Aylem make a connection between her own actions and those of her mother? She wasn't stupid. She had a lot of time to think about it when she ran away from herself and her memories.

"What is Conventry?" Kamagishi asked. "That was a really clear thought, Emily. I'm sorry. Being powerful enough to be a high priestess means sometimes hearing all the noise from all the thousands of thoughts constantly being blasted about by every sapient thing. It's one of the reasons some of us never leave the shrines if we can help it."

* I could help with that, * Ud said. * When this is over, we should talk, Kamagishi. *

"Alright," I interrupted, " before w...we get too distracted, we need to talk to Imstay, and w...we need to find Opo'aba before she and her mother intersect."

"I'm awake," Imstay stumbled out in his stocking feet. "Ud just woke me up." He sat down. "You want to know about Opa?"

"Opa?" I asked.

"Nickname," he replied, taking a beaker of beer from Garki. "She snuck off to one of the examination days at the Shrine of Galt under a false identity. Garki the forgery artist helped with that as did her brother and someone named Bobbo who I am told is no relation to a general by that name. Given that we already know she has The Voice, it is not surprising that her highest score was with the shrine of Sassoo. She could not respond in the usual way to all the invitations to the six shrines she qualified for."

"Which ones?" Lisaykos wanted to know.

"Sassoo, Gertzpul, Mueb, Giltak, Galt and Landa." Imstay saw the disappointed expression on Lisaykos' face, "sorry, not Mugash."

"But Giltak?" Lisaykos was incredulous.

"Opa is even better than her mother at math," Imstay sighed, "and she was Garki's partner in crime in ordering the Revelation of Giltak to Emily." He spotted Garki smiling to himself and swatted the boy on the rear. "So as I was saying, all the shrine invites went to the address certain parties used for her in the city, which was 6 Brewers Row. Oyyuth opened them and was almost ready to take them over to the Shrine of Galt, not knowing what else to do with them when her husband rescued them.

"My poor daughter received a visit from Usruldes the Wraith while studying in the schoolroom with Garki and Heldfirk. He told her that she should write the shrine of her choice, explaining her dilemma with sneaking into the examinations. She should reveal in the letter that she wanted to enroll and that if she had the support of the high priestess, she would be able to make a case to her father the king.

"No high priestess who has a lick of sanity will turn down enrolling a haup Foskos, especially one who is a princess of the greater rank. Senlyosart got Opa's letter, hopped on her eagle, and barged into my office one rotation before the end of the year. The Shrine of Sassoo enrolls on the midday of the planting season, which only gave us a handful of rotations before enrollment.

"Opa's had very few opportunities to meet other kids her age, other than her cousins. Then Aylem stopped visits to my family so Opa didn't get to see any of them anymore. Now, I'm not sure I want her to see them anymore either, the ones still alive. Regardless, Opa didn't want the burden of being known as a princess right off the bat, so we talked Oyyuth into making her and Hessakos Opa's guardians. Since Hessakos was off on the king's business, Bobbo and his daughter flew Opa and Oyyuth down to the shrine, and Bobbo stood in for Hessakos at the enrollment ceremony.

"I hid in the wings in the Well of Sassoo and watched," he smiled a proud father smile. "Because Lord Pinisla was standing in for Lord of the Court Hessakos haup Gunndit, she was the second to last candidate to enroll. Then she made the now-destroyed crystal sing."

"Really? That's wonderful!" Lisaykos was impressed. "I wonder why she didn't pass the test for my shrine. She should have been a natural given that she's her mother's daughter."

"W...what's The Voice?" I asked. I had never heard of this.

"It's the ability to use your voice not only to excel at performance in oratory or singing, but to cast certain charms with voice alone, like the charms of peace on a crowd or mob, or the charm of compulsion to impose your will," Imstay explained. "It's a talent that runs in the haup Foskos bloodline. Several of the royal family have become the High Priestess of Sassoo over the centuries. In fact, Senlyosart is a far cousin on the paternal side."

I shook my head, thinking I need to camp out at the Shrine of Galt and just read every book in the place. I didn't know nearly enough about Foskos and the shrines.

"If Lisaykos will let you, you are certainly welcome to do so, little one," Kamagihi smiled. Then she frowned. "Blarg! I did it again. I'm sorry, Emily."

"Don't w...worry about. Everyone is tired and I'm getting used to it." Damn Cosm. It wasn't as if they could stop being telepathic. Worse yet, I couldn't even blame them since they could stop themselves.

Imstay took the conversation back over: "Opa is enrolled incognito as Opa hat Kas'syo, raised by the folks at the Kas'syo Brewery, who took her in as a street stray. They educated her and taught her magic when they realized she had magic at a young age. This works well since she already knows them as Uncle Hessakos and Aunt Oyyuth. Before you ask, Lisaykos, she is already a friend with your granddaughter."

"Well, someone needs to collar Opa hat Kay'syo and sequester her so she doesn't encounter her mother in a setting that we don't control," I said feeling more tired by the second.

"I'm already her Aunt Kami," Kamagishi said. "I'll go find her."

"Aunt Kami?" Imstay raised an eyebrow. "Is that why she always came home late when she visited the shrine library?"

Kamagishi grinned, "You betcha, Daddy Kingy-poo!"

"Daddy Kingy Poo?" Imstay's jaw dropped and bounced a couple of times.

"Sorry," Kamagishi had the good grace to look embarrassed. "I got that from your daughter."

"Alright, Imstay will go back to sleep," I synopsized before we got diverted by too many tangents. "I need some cushions so I can catch a nap. Lisaykos needs a rest. Kamagishi needs to find Opa and Usruldes will take care of everything else and make a kite."

"Yes, that's about right," Usruldes got up and fetched some cushions, a few blankets, and a bed mat out of the sleeping chamber of the royal pavilion. "Let's get you set up since ambushing Aylem is the most important part of this. I'll take care of everything else."

"Wraith boy, I have a meeting that needs to be...," Imstay started.

"My staff is already taking personal notices to the attendees that the meeting is rescheduled for the fifth bell, Imstay King," Usruldes purred in his melodious bass.

"Oh. Right. Good job. I'm going back to sleep. Would one of you lovely ladies use a sleep charm on me, please?"

"Garki, would you carry Emily for me please?" Usruldes asked, his hands full.

"Yes, sir!" He stopped his charm of warmth on the proto-sekanjabin and picked me up in both arms. "Hello again, Great One," he grinned. I surmised he had lost his apprehension of me since the destruction of the Impotuan army at the Shrine of Tiki.

"Did you finish all your rolls, Great One?" he asked. "I saw you ate all the bacon."

"Yes, I finished all three rolls and now I am stuffed," I replied, wondering which of my torturers recruited him to keep me fed.

"Lunch will be shredded bison with melted cheese and grilled onions between toasted bread, which is new. The ingredients between two pieces of bread are called a sandwich," he explained as he followed Usruldes out of the royal pavilion. "I didn't know if you had encountered sandwiches yet since they are a new thing and are just catching on now in Is'syal."

I could see Usruldes' shoulders shaking as he silently laughed while Garki explained sandwiches to the person who introduced sandwiches to Erdos.

Then Usruldes stopped abruptly and Garki almost ran into his back. Usruldes dropped to his knees, put his hands pressed together against his forehead, and bowed to the ground, trembling. Garki started trembling too and carefully got to his knees so he wouldn't jostle me. He started muttering, "please don't hurt me," over and over again.

When Galt's fluffy paws landed on Garki's shoulders and Galt's flooffy head popped up at my eye level, I knew why.

* Hello again, kitten. I just want to give you a little help so Aylem can't accidentally read your mind this afternoon. *

His paw dropped down and tapped me on my stomach. * There, that should do it. *

Then chaos erupted as a sonic boom made the ground tremble and I watched as multiple tents collapsed. A spinning ball of blue and purple strands of opaque mist appeared next to us, lit by small internal flashes of light so bright they left retinal burn aftereffects. The ball was the size of a griffin. It dispersed explosively and out of it stepped the most handsome giant man in a red ochre robe worn off one shoulder, textured with silver-gray patterning like Han dynasty Chinese textiles.

He was easily two heads taller than the average Cosm high priestess. His skin was so dark brown it was almost black and he was gorgeous to look at, like the most buff of any Zulu warrior: long-limbed and strong with a runner's or swimmer's muscles. His head was hairless and gleamed. He didn't have eyes per se: what was contained in his eye sockets was as black as space and glowed with thousands of pinpricks of starlight.

If the figure of Mugash was lovely in all her compassion, this figure was beautiful in all its potential strength. I wondered if this was the god of war.

He picked up Galt by the ruff of his fuzzy neck and held the cat god like he was a piece of rubbish to be thrown out. Then he looked at me and smiled with perfect teeth that actually sparkled, better than Tony Curtis in the Great Race because the sparkle was real and not a movie special effect.

"Greetings, lovely little soul. I am not Erhonsay, god of war and peace. I am Sassoo, father of all music and god of the winds and the hunt. This is my Shrine and these are my people."

He held Galt out and looked at the cat with disgust, "and this thing is crashing on my territory without permission."

Galt purred, completely unconcerned.

* Dude, time was of the essence. Emily was testing her hypothesis of how magic as one of the six forces, can affect time as the dependent variable, by varying the boundary conditions where an immutable event is a constant. Unfortunately, she was much more successful in manipulating a mage to isolate the independent variables than Tiki and I anticipated and I wanted to... *

"Silence, meddling godlet," Sassoo bellowed, cutting Galt off.

Then everything went wonky as the world froze, excluding me, Galt, and the enraged Sassoo.