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starting to teach me, she'd pick the most horrible, seemingly useless things
and demand that I tell her what they were good for?"
Fiolon nodded. "So what's the fog good for?"
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"If you watch the way it drifts, you can tell which way the wind blows here.
Rain and snow are a little too solid and heavy; the fog is light enough and
visible enough so that you can see the pattern."
"Hmm." Fiolon studied it for several minutes. "The wind seems to be coming
from the west—from Mount Gidris. That's where Haramis found her
Talisman, you know."
"Did she?" Mikayla asked. "No, I didn't know. What's on Mount Gidris?"
"A bunch of ice caves, which tend to be rather unstable. Don't go exploring
there, Mika, all right?"
"I'm not planning to—oh, no; I think we've got trouble." Mikayla
pointed to the precipitation still falling from the sky.
It was late afternoon, and the rain was beginning to change to hailstones.
"Stop it," Fiolon said, dashing back to the table. "Quickly!"
Mikayla was right behind him, and together they pushed the storm down the
slope and away from the Tower. When the clouds were gone, the sun shone
faintly near the western horizon.
"The courtyard's still wet"—Mikayla sighed—"and it will
probably freeze over tonight. I do hope that once the cell is charged, we'll be
able to find some way of keeping it free of snow."
"Me, too," Fiolon said. "I'd hate to have to go through this every few days."
"Well, we're done for today at least," Mikayla pointed out. "We'll try to finish
up tomorrow. Let's go down to the kitchen; I want to get something hot to
drink and to tell the servants to stay out of the plaza. I don't want any of them
hurt."
Enya found a couple of small stools for them to sit on and provided hot drinks
for them at once; she had a large pot of hot ladu-juice set over the fire. Next to
the fire were several very unhappy-looking Vispi.
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"What did you do to the weather?" one of them asked in the voice of someone
too wretched to care that he was being rude to his social superiors. "It's not
supposed to be wet here! The damp hurts my lungs." He coughed
miserably. The rest of the Vispi just huddled near the fire and looked
unhappy.
He was correct, Mikayla realized. When it snowed here, the air stayed dry. In
fact, even the snow in this region was on the dry side for snow. And the
air was very thin at this height.
She remembered Uzun's laughter when she asked why Haramis didn't use the
Vispi to carry messages to the lowlands. "That's why you don't leave the
mountain, isn't it?" she asked. "You're used to thin, dry air. It's not the heat
that bothers you, it's the humidity."
"My grandsire tried to go down the hill once," one of the younger Vispi said.
"He didn't go far, and when he came back, he said it was like trying to breath
adop soup!"
"He was right," Fiolon agreed. "After you've been up here awhile, you adjust
to the air here. Then when you descend, what you're breathing feels much too
thick and warm." He shrugged. "I readjusted after a day or so, of course, but
I'm not at all sure that a Vispi could. I've never heard of one that did."
"I shan't ask any of you to go down the hill, then," Mikayla said. "As for the
rain and the fog, it should be gone in another day or so, or by tomorrow if
we're really lucky. Which reminds me, everyone should stay off the
plaza—I'm afraid it's going to turn into a sheet of ice again tonight."
The Vispi groaned, and even the Nyssomu, who didn't go outdoors, looked
depressed. Enya sighed. "Princess, do you mind if I make up pallets on the
floor here for the Vispi and let them sleep by the fire?"
"Not if you don't mind," Mikayla replied. "It's your kitchen. They certainly
won't be in my way here; so as long as they're not in yours, I certainly have no
objection." She rose to her feet. "Thank you for the hot drinks, Enya. Fiolon
and I will get out of your way now. Will an hour from now do for dinner? You
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don't have to cook something fancy, anything warm will do—even adop
soup."
Enya chuckled. "Dinner will be in the study in an hour. Princess. And I think I
can do better for you than adop soup."
Drying the plaza was a bit more difficult than Mikayla had anticipated. Even
when the sun was high the next day, it was still too cold to melt the ice and dry
the solar cell. And high clouds kept drifting overhead from the direction of
Mount Gidris, hiding the sun a good part of the time. At one point, it even
began to snow briefly, causing both of them to dash to the workroom to stop
it.
Finally Mikayla and Fiolon bundled up in warm clothing, took a pair of
torches each, and started melting the ice by nonmagical means. Since the
plaza sloped gently downhill from the Tower door to the chasm, they started
at the door. Once that ice melted, the water was warm enough to help melt the
ice farther on. Bit by bit, they worked their way across the plaza. By sunset,
about a third of it was clear of ice and dry.
"I think that's all we can do for today," Mikayla said, straightening up with a
sigh. Her back hurt from spending so much time stooped over holding a torch
near the ground. Oh, well , she thought, at least my feet are warm .
"I think we'll be able to finish this tomorrow."
"If we're lucky," Fiolon groaned. "And if our muscles hold out."
"We may have charged part of it already," Mikayla said cheerfully. "The
torches aren't just heat, they're light as well." She looked at Fiolon. "Do you
want to see the ice caves now?"
A low moan was his first response. Then he added, "Tomorrow, all right? All I
want now is a hot bath and a warm dinner."
"Me, too," Mikayla said. "We can check out the caves at midday
tomorrow—we'll be wanting to take a break then anyway."
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"I don't doubt that in the slightest." Fiolon sighed. "Mika, are you sure that
this is going to work?"
"I'm not absolutely positive," Mikayla admitted, "but I think that the chances
are very good. The mirror said that the solar cell needed to be recharged, this
plaza certainly looks like the part of the music boxes that has to be exposed to
light for the music to play, and we are exposing it to light. So it should work."
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