Maker of Fire

Imstay King

I was married to the most beautiful woman in the world. To look at Aylem was to be captivated. She had perfect proportions and was ample and round in all the right places, even after having two children, even at 34. Surely the Gods must have crafted her long oval face with its full lips, aquiline nose, and deep purple eyes that a man could fall into and become lost. Her thick soft hair, which was the color of starlight, fell almost as far as her knees. To see her was to desire her and I was the one man permitted to marry her.

Please do not envy me.

After things started going wrong for us, I thought I might one day die at her perfect hands as she cast a charm of exquisitely painful death from her long elegant fingers. Along with being the most beautiful woman, she was also the tallest, the strongest, and the most powerful. The Holy Fassex, High Priestess of Landa, once told me that Aylem was twice as powerful as all eleven high priestesses put together. If she ever wanted to overthrow the throne and the shrines and rule on her own, she could do so if she wanted.

There was never any doubt that Aylem would be queen. Aylem was the one with the power to control the Great Crystal in Well of Tiki, the largest and best in the world. When she was nine years old, the Convocation took her to the shrine where the crystal resided for over three millennia. Once there, she placed the flame of her power into the crystal. It's been there ever since. Aylem displaced my mother's flame but that is not an uncommon event. As one queen's power ages, her successor's power grows; however, no living queen has ever lost the ability to use the crystal, even if her successor's flame has already displaced hers.

In my cold bed at night, I often stared at the ceiling and wondered how it went so wrong. I tried to be a good and caring husband. We both knew it was a political marriage. Neither of us had any illusions about that but for the first seven or eight years, we shifted together well enough. I'm not sure when it started going bad. By the time Heldfirk was four, Aylem forbade either of the children from visiting anyone on my mother's side of the family without her. She had come to loathe my last two living uncles so she refused to meet with them outside of necessary court functions. The only place left where our children could see their relatives was at the palace in my apartments.

Aylem believed that my family was taking advantage of me. She thought I had given them too many kingdom offices. She became convinced that they were embezzling money from the tax collections and kingdom coffers. In the days we still got along, she asked if she could introduce a better system of tracking the kingdom's money. I'm not a numbers kind of person so I permitted it.

Her new numbers and her new way of auditing the records of the exchequer brought trouble. Her audits showed that some of my cousins had slipped up and failed to send all of their tax revenues. Some of my family received payment for repairs to roads and bridges but later inspections suggested that the work had never been done. Her accounting showed that my two uncles, Kushamar and Nirirgi, had shorted the kingdom on reserve grain shipments.

Aylem wanted the losses on paper made up and the people who cheated the kingdom to be punished or fined. She refused to understand that people made mistakes. Many found it difficult to use the new numbers; however, she had no forgiveness for imperfections. I regretted I ever permitting the change in accounting.

The Queen of Foskos has the power of veto over any law or action I want to make. I wanted to allow the optional use of the old numbers for accounting four years after the switch. This would have allowed those who had trouble with the new number to use the old ones for a time. Aylem said no. That was our first bad altercation. It was then that I discovered that Aylem had no regard for family. My two uncles and four of my cousins cornered Aylem about the matter and would not take no for an answer. I tried to mediate. That was a mistake.

Aylem with her monstrous power cast the charm of one thousand stings for the short time it took her to exhale. Half were bedridden for a week afterward. I managed to return to my duties the next day.

The most powerful human mage ever born had a dangerous temper and I had the misfortune to be married to her.

---

Aylem, at the palace in Is'syal

The argument I had with Imstay was epic though I got the last word like usual. I sometimes thought that if I let him win once in a while, we might have had a chance at a better relationship. Sadly, being right was important, and he was seldom right about the things I cared about, so he never won. It was really a dreadful situation.

I was the one with the power to use the Great Crystal so I was stuck as queen. Since no one had more magical power in Foskos than I did, I had veto power over anything Imstay decided to do as king. Luckily, he was distracted during most of the good weather with his little wars over agricultural land to the east.

Foskos was poor on good agricultural land. The plains to the east had a few river-fed basins that could sustain small grains without irrigation. I felt sorry for the few people who lived there but we needed those wheat fields. Welcome to life in a primitive culture. It's rob or be robbed most of the time.

Imstay's problems with me usually happened during the cold season when he was home from war. He meddled with the tutors for the children; he spent more money than I allocated for off-season war activities; and he wanted to micromanage everything. Frankly, he reminded me of one of those twit managers from Oxford or Cambridge who thought he had the answer for everything just because he was an aristocrat with a classical education in Latin and Greek. Imstay had no common sense whatsoever about finances, believed his family could do no wrong and had a massive ego.

His mother, my predecessor, doted on him and spoiled him. Unlike her, I will not see my son spoiled and raised to be a bigot like Imstay.

When we returned to the palace and I placed Opo'aba in bed, Imstay came chasing after me with complaints about everything: the children trying to follow him on his hunting trip, the children getting lost in the sudden snowstorm, the children being blown across the lava plains, my chasing the children yesterday, and my resolve to replace the current tutors. The last round of complaints arrived just as I had changed back into my comfortable long skirts and was beginning to relax.

I enjoyed having my hair done every morning. I was leaning back on my lounge sofa so my two favorite Coyn attendants could reach to put my hair back up when Imstay came stomping in with several of his followers in tow. "What's this about dismissing Uncles Kushamar and Nirirgi as the children's instructors, Aylem?" He stopped an arm's length from my lounge with his hands on his hips, glowering---as if that would ever intimidate me.

From what I could tell, ever since Imstay appointed them royal tutors after the last harvest, his favorite two uncles had been teaching an annoying doctrine that anyone less than a noble was worthless. I thought this was a particularly bad thing to teach a kid who might become king someday.

"It's just as you say, Imstay," I waved my attendants to leave for now. I didn't want my time having my hair done spoiled by Imstay's current fit of pique.

"Neither Kushamar nor Nirirgi have any appreciation for the value of life or the usefulness of craft and skill, both magical and non-magical, that may exist outside noble society," I explained with what little patience I had left. "This is a bad thing to teach someone who will eventually need to rule all types of people in the kingdom, from the highest priestess down to the lowest street cleaner. It's inappropriate training for a future ruler."

"There's nothing wrong with the magic hierarchy," he argued. "Magic is concentrated in the nobles, who make the kingdom work through its use. Everyone else is just dead weight that we have to find food to feed."

Personally, I think he just wanted to flatter his mother's brothers with important titles, so he could look good and act like he was powerful in front of his mother's family.

"We have had this discussion before, Imstay. I have had a lousy three days and you are making things worse. Kushamar and Nirirgi are dismissed. There is nothing to discuss. I will inform you of who their replacements are once I find them. Now please leave."

"No, the children don't..."

My temper finally snapped. I cast a very brief charm of a thousand stings at Imstay and his minions and they fell to the floor. "Do not anger me further. You can leave on your own two feet or you can leave being dragged out in a helpless and embarrassing state. Decide now." I'm afraid I am a bit scary when I lose my temper, and I seldom do so, but Imstay is talented at dragging my bad temper out of me.

After he left, I counted the days until the cold season broke and the storms stopped. Then I could find that little Coyn and try to talk to her about steel and matches and healing her old head injury.

---

Bobbo, General of the Left, at the palace in Is'syal

The planning meeting for the upcoming campaign had broken up and I was in the hallway outside the king's study. Imstay was ahead of me with his page, two army clerks, and the quartermaster general. He turned when he realized I was behind him. "General Bobbo," he hailed me as I was walking. "Hold up a moment. I wanted to ask you for your independent opinion whether the army should pursue farmers who abandon their land."

The current campaign we were planning aimed to finish the annexation of the two valleys on our northeast border. They were inhabited by a small population of stateless pioneers, a mix of both Cosm and Coyn. We were moving in because we needed those two well-drained valleys to grow wheat and other small grains. The upper valley of the Salt River, which was the only ground that wasn't too steep to farm, was plagued by frequent devastating floods.

Last year, many of the stateless farmers fled rather than be overtaken by our army. I had taken my tablet out to illustrate why I believed it was a tactic that would cost us needless expense. I knew his other two senior generals would disagree. They were also his maternal uncles, who wanted to pursue any who fled. I didn't tell the king that his uncles wanted to do so because two-thirds of those so-called farmers were Coyn. If captured, every Coyn would become profit in his uncles' pockets. His uncles were part of the noble haup Blockit clan, one of the northern clans that became wealthy through the Coyn slave trade. They saw nothing wrong with rounding up new Coyn to sell.

Besides the ethical problem of enslaving free Coyn, the problem with capturing the Coyn farmers was one of improper distribution of costs and benefits. The army was funded by taxes so the cost was spread out over the entire populace. The proceeds of the sale of new slaves captured by the army went to the soldiers and their officers that brought them in. No part of that sale went to defray the kingdom's cost of equipping and paying its soldiers.

I was just breaking down the costs for the king on my tablet when a courier ran up and gave the king a message.

"Gertzpul take her and send her to the icy hell of Uekroy!" The King turned and stomped down the corridor to the turn-off for the queen's apartments, which were also on the fourth floor. He had all my calculations on my tablet in his hand. I should never have chased after him.

He went flying through the doors of the queen's apartments at a pace the rest of us couldn't keep up with. Imstay was the most magical royal male of his generation, which is why he was king. As such, he topped the rest of us by a head or more. By the time I caught up with him and his long legs, he was trading heated words with the queen, who was flushing red with anger.

"There's nothing wrong with the magic hierarchy," he argued. "Magic is concentrated in the nobles, who make the kingdom work through its use. Everyone else is just dead weight that we have to find food to feed."

"We have had this discussion before, Imstay," she said with fraying control. I tensed in fright at her tone of voice. "I have had a lousy three days and you are making things worse. Kushamar and Nirirgi are dismissed. There is nothing to discuss. I will inform you of who their replacements are once I find them. Now please leave."

"No, the children don't...," Imstay didn't back down which was a terrible mistake on his part. The tremendous pressure of her briefly-released power slammed me into the floor and it was impossible to breathe. Everything hurt. I swear even my hair hurt. It only lasted the briefest of moments but I could barely move.

Imstay is an amazing man. Despite the queen's debilitating magic, he was back on his feet immediately. He picked me right off the floor and set me on my feet. I am not a small man. I may be a head shorter than the king but I was gifted with a thick and sturdy frame. I may be a halfhair with just a handful of magic tricks but the king is one of the only silverhairs that can beat me on the tournament field. I confess I am a bit vain about my prowess but a halfhair doesn't get to be the General of the Left without being able to beat those overgrown overpowered aristocratic silverhairs into the mud with feats of arms.

"Help me with the clerks, please," he asked. Lord Ossoskomos, the quartermaster general, was an older silverhair. He was already struggling to his feet. The clerks were both men of little magic and nary a white hair on their heads. The charm hurt them more than they had hurt Ossokomos, myself, or the king. I picked up one and the king carried the other. Ossoskomos held the door as we fled from the queen's temper.