1629, Fire Season, Fertility Week, Wildday
Context
Kolyey wants to talk to Priestess Raldina about elements and temple defence. Session S5.W-08.
Events
Yes. “Green Woman, we need to discuss the defense of the city.” Kolyey finds a moment when Raldina is almost free.
Raldina bows her head slightly. “Yes. Come talk with me.” She takes a few moments to check that the food and blankets being brought in are going to the right places, and then walks down the stairs to the inner room.
Inpira follows Raldina. “How many elementals can you summon?”
“I know the names of four,” she says. “After that, I will be calling on any that will listen. One of those four I carry here.” She taps the jace necklace she wears. Even down here she stays busy, looking to the sacred things that must be protected, taking treasures out of a private cupboard.
Inpira thinks hard. “Not enough to dig a trench around the city- or am I wrong?”
“Not enough. I could not summon all of them and instruct them, and still have them tomorrow. I could call the largest now and have her start work, and still keep the others to defend the Temple.” Raldina is sorting some things into a box, some back into the cupboard. Many look valuable.
“I noticed a slope near where one of the walkways reaches the inmost wall. Could she make the slope impossible to climb?” Inpira says.
“She can. There are hollows and pits she can make as well, but that depends on whether we will be going out or not. She can flow around such things but not make them quickly. I can have her close by.”
Inpira nods. “Please do that, High Priestess. I am torn between going to the city gate and commanding the last defense.”
“We’d like there to be a first defense, I think,” Raldina replies. “My husband-lord tells me that everything depends on whether the gates hold.”
“The prisoner told the sage that the pirates have a magic that breaks gates. We must hold the walkways.”
Raldina says quietly, “We have to hold the inner town. The sacred top here. So, even if they break both gates, we will be making a stand there. We do not give it up.”
“Of course not,” says Inpira. “I am not sure where I can be of most assistance. Would that there were more Axe Maidens here.”
“I have just …” Raldina takes a deep breath. “Either the inner gate or the outer one. I will trap the outer one more.”
With one cupboard sorted, Raldina goes onto another. She starts doing much the same thing.
Inpira tiptoes to the altar of Babeester Gor and says a few prayers, lamenting she does not have the connection with her goddess to ask questions of defense.
Raldina takes the time to create a few piles of items, and then she stands by them, and touches the jade necklace. A shower of coppery dirt falls from it onto the floor, and spreads far wider than its volume would indicate it could. The earth quivers, and the things piled on it begin to sink downwards, at a whisper in Earthtongue from the Priestess.
Whatever Raldina says, she gives several instructions, and then steps away from the disappearing treasures. “Those are sent to Asrelia,” she says. “I cannot get them back.”
“Better Asrelia than the pirates,” says Inpira. “Is there anything else that I can help with before I sleep and go down to the outer gate?”
“No, little enough. I must go back upstairs anyway. If you can sleep with that bustle up there it would probably comfort people to see you relaxed.”
Inpira smiles. “I will do my best. Please have someone wake me two hours before dawn.”
Raldina ushers Inpira up the stairs first, as if she were a guard employed here.
Inpira goes upstairs, to pray and get some sleep.
