Table of Contents
Earth Logic
Part One: Raven’s Joke
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Part Two: How Raven Became A God
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Part Three: The Walk Around
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Part Four: What’s Inside the Buffalo
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Part Five: How Tortoise Woman Saved the World
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Acknowledgments
About the author
Water Logic
Prologue: Seeking Balance
Fire
Water
Earth
Air
Part One: The Region of Reconstruction
Chapter 1
Praise for Laurie J. Marks’s Elemental Logic novels:
Fire Logic
Spectrum Award winner
Romantic Times Reviewers Choice award nominee
“Marks has created a work filled with an intelligence that zings off the page.”
—Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
“Marks is an absolute master of fantasy in this book. Her characters are beautifully drawn, showing tremendous emotional depth and strength as they endure the unendurable and strive always to do the right thing, and her unusual use of the elemental forces central to her characters’ lives gives the book a big boost. This is read-it-straight-through adventure!”
—Booklist (Starred Review)
“A cast of memorable characters whose lives, loves, and sacrifices combine to imbue faith in a shattered land.”
—Library Journal
“Marks vividly describes a war-torn land, and the depth of character development makes this novel a page-turner.”
—VOYA
“A deftly painted story of both cultures and magics in conflict. Marks avoids the black-and-white conflicts of generic fantasy to offer a window on a complex world of unique cultures and elemental magic.”
—Robin Hobb
“Cuts deliciously through the mind to the heart with the delicacy, strength, beauty, and surgical precision of the layered Damascus steel blade that provides one of the book’s central images.”
—Candas Jane Dorsey
“Laurie Marks brings skill, passion, and wisdom to her new novel. Entertaining and engaging—an excellent read!”
—Kate Elliott
“This is a treat: a strong, fast-paced tale of war and politics in a fantasy world where magic based on the four elements of alchemy not only works but powerfully affects the lives of those it touches. An unusual, exciting read.”
—Suzy McKee Charnas
“A glorious cast of powerful, compelling, and appealingly vulnerable characters struggling to do the right thing in a world gone horribly wrong. I couldn’t put this down until I’d read it to the end. Marks truly understands the complex forces of power, desire, and obligation.”
—Nalo Hopkinson
“Most intriguingly, about two-thirds of the way into the book, the low-key magical facets of her characters’ elemental magics rise away from simply being fancy “weapons” and evoke—for both the readers and the characters—that elusive sense of wonder.”
—Charles de Lint, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
“An exquisite novel of quiet charm. Fire Logic is a tale of war and magic, of duty, love and betrayal, of despair encompassed by hope.”
—SF Site
Earth Logic
Spectrum Award winner
“With this follow-up to Fire Logic, Marks produces another stunner of a book. The powerful but subtle writing glows with intelligence, and the passionate, fierce, articulate, strong, and vital characters are among the most memorable in contemporary fantasy, though not for the faint of heart. Definitely for the thinking reader.”
—Booklist (starred review)
“The sequel to Fire Logic continues the tale of a woman born to magic and destined to rule. Vivid descriptions and a well-thought-out system of magic.”
—Library Journal
“Twenty years after the invading Sainnites won the Battle of Lilterwess, the struggle for the world of Shaftal is far from finished in Marks’s stirring, intricately detailed sequel to Fire Logic. . . . Full of love and humor as well as war and intrigue, this well-crafted epic fantasy will delight existing fans as surely as it will win new ones.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Rich and affecting. . . . A thought-provoking and sometimes heartbreaking political novel.”
—BookPage
“Earth Logic is not a book of large battles and heart-stopping chases; rather, it’s more gradual and contemplative and inexorable, like the earth bloods who people it. It’s a novel of the everyday folk who are often ignored in fantasy novels, the farmers and cooks and healers. In this novel, the everyday lives side by side with the extraordinary, and sometimes within it; Karis herself embodies the power of ordinary, mundane methods to change the world.”
—SF Revu
“It is an ambitious thing to do, in this time of enemies and hatreds, to suggest that a conflict can be resolved by peaceable means. Laurie Marks believes that it can be done, and she relies relatively little on magic to make it work.”
—Cheryl Morgan, Emerald City
“Earth Logic is intelligent, splendidly visualized, and beautifully written. Laurie Marks’s use of language is really tremendous.”
—Paula Volsky
“A dense and layered book filled with complex people facing impossible choices. Crammed with unconventional families, conflicted soldiers, amnesiac storytellers, and practical gods, the story also finds time for magical myths of origin and moments of warm, quiet humor. Against a bitter backdrop of war and winter, Marks offers hope in the form of various triumphs: of fellowship over chaos, the future over the past, and love over death.”
—Sharon Shinn
“A powerful and hopeful story where the peacemakers are as heroic as the warriors; where there is magic in good food and flower bulbs; and where the most powerful weapon of all is a printing press.”
—Naomi Kritzer
“Earth Logic is not a book of large battles and heart-stopping chases; rather, it’s more gradual and contemplative and inexorable, like the earth bloods who people it. It’s a novel of the everyday folk who are often ignored in fantasy novels, the farmers and cooks and healers. In this novel, the everyday lives side by side with the extraordinary, and sometimes within it; Karis herself embodies the power of ordinary, mundane methods to change the world.”
—SF Revu
“It is an ambitious thing to do, in this time of enemies and hatreds, to suggest that a conflict can be resolved by peaceable means. Laurie Marks believes that it can be done, and she relies relatively little on magic to make it work.”
—Cheryl Morgan, Emerald City
Earth Logic
Elementa
l Logic: Book Two
Laurie J. Marks
Small Beer Press
Easthampton, MA
This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are either fictitious or used fictitiously.
Copyright © 2004 by Laurie J. Marks. All rights reserved.
www.lauriejmarks.com
First published in 2004 by Tor.
First Small Beer Press edition 2014.
Small Beer Press
150 Pleasant Street #306
Easthampton, MA 01027
www.smallbeerpress.com
www.weightlessbooks.com
[email protected]
Distributed to the trade by Consortium.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data on file
isbn: 9781618730930 (trade paper); 9781618730947 (ebook)
Paper edition printed on 50# Natures Natural 30% Recycled Paper in the USA.
Text set in Centaur MT.
Cover art © 2014 Kathleen Jennings (tanaudel.wordpress.com).
For the people of Melrose, Massachusetts—especially the barristas, poets, counselors, babies, delivery people, firemen, illegal parkers, students, parents, photographers, coffee drinkers, jay-walkers, and neighbors. And also for the people who love snow, plant flowers, hang Christmas lights, and refuse to put vinyl siding on their beautiful Victorian houses. And for their dogs and cats, and for the crabby snapping turtle I rescued from the middle of the road one afternoon, and for the flocks of geese who fly by overhead.
Part One: Raven’s Joke
One day, Raven was bored. He left his home in the cliff that can be found at the end of the world, and went flying back and forth over the forest, until he noticed a woman sneaking through the trees. The woman was trying to shoot a deer to cook for her three daughters, who had big appetites.
Raven flew up ahead of the hunter until he saw the deer, which was lying in the cool shade waiting for sunset. Raven shouted, “Run away, deer, as fast as you can, for there is a hunter’s arrow aimed at your heart!” The deer jumped up and ran into the forest. Then the hunter was very angry and cried, “You are an evil bird, for because of you my daughters will go hungry!”
Raven was ashamed of himself, and said, “You are right to be angry with me. So take your bow and arrow and shoot me, and take me home for your daughters’ supper.” So that is what the hunter did. She killed the Raven and cooked him in a soup.
Even though the girls ate the soup, they were still hungry, and no matter how much they ate, they stayed hungry. And the hunter, their mother, who was tired because she had been hunting all day, stayed tired no matter how much she rested. And their neighbor, who was very old and sick, never died. And the summer never turned to autumn. And the harvest never ripened. And nothing ever broke, but the things that already were broken could not be mended.
One day everyone in the world came to visit the tired hunter and her three hungry daughters. “Did Raven trick you into killing him?” they asked. The tired hunter told them exactly what had happened. Everyone became very upset with her, and said, “Didn’t you know that Raven is the one who decides everything? He may be mischievous and hard-hearted, but without him we cannot go forward with our lives. You should have thought of what you were doing. Now we will never see our children grow up, and whatever we are now, that is what we will always be, and nothing will ever change.”
They all thought and thought, and then the hunter’s youngest and hungriest daughter said, “I know where Raven’s bones are.” So they dug all Raven’s bones out of the ashes of the fire. The middle daughter took some string and glue and put all the bones together the way they were supposed to be. Then, the oldest daughter found all the Raven’s wing and tail feathers and glued them on the bones. Finally, the hunter took the arrow that had killed the Raven and smeared the bones with the blood that was still wet on the arrowhead. And then, all the people of the world began to laugh. “Hey, Raven,” they said, “That was a pretty good joke!” Raven, of course, could never resist a good laugh, so he began to laugh too. “Ha! Ha!” he said, “That was a good joke!” And then he flew on his bone wings to the river to eat frogs and snails until he got fat and looked like himself again. The hunter shot a deer and her daughters were no longer hungry. The harvest ripened, the old neighbor died, and the world continued its journey as it should, from summer to winter, from life to death, and from foolishness to wisdom.
Chapter 1
The woman who was the hope of Shaftal walked in solitude through a snow-muffled woodland.
Dressed in three shirts of threadbare wool and an ancient sheepskin jerkin, she carried an ax in a sling across her back, and dragged a sledge behind her, in which to pile firewood. She might have been any woodcutter setting out between storms to replenish the woodpile.
The season of starvation had brought down another deer. It was frozen in a bed of churned up, scarlet snow, and the torn skin now lay in stiff rags. Rib bones gleamed with frost, the belly was a hollowed cavern, and a gnawed leg bone lay at a distance. The woodcutter scarcely glanced at this gruesome mess as she strode past, breaking through the snow’s crust and sinking knee-deep with every step. But the ravens that followed behind her uttered hoarse shouts of discovery and swooped eagerly down to the feast of carrion. They stalked up to the deer’s remains, sprang nervously up into the air, and landed again. After this silly ritual of caution they began to bicker over the best pieces.
The woodcutter, having selected a tree, unslung her ax. As the sharp blade bit into the trunk, clots of snow were shaken loose from above. The ravens paid no heed, not even when the tree fell with a spectacular crash.
The woodcutter gazed with satisfaction at the fallen trunk. Her cut had revealed the tree’s sick center, the rot that would have soon killed it. Breathing heavily, she took off her bright knit cap to cool herself, and her wild hair sprang up like the tangled branches of a thicket. “It’s cold enough to freeze snot,” she said.
The ravens, apparently easily amused, cackled loudly.
The woodcutter let her gaze wander upwards, across the treetops, toward a distant smear of smoke, nearly invisible against the heavy clouds. “Scholars! They’d die of cold before they noticed they were out of firewood.”
“Ark!” protested a raven, as another stole a tidbit right out of his mouth. They scuffled like street children; feathers flew.
“Uncivilized birds!” The woodcutter struck her ax into the stump.
The birds looked up at her hopefully as she approached the dead deer. Using a knife that had been inside her coat, she trimmed back the deer’s stiff skin and sliced off strips of meat, which she fed to the importunate ravens. The birds were not yet sated when she abruptly rose out of her squat and turned towards the northeast.
She was tall: a giant among the midlanders. Still, she could not see over the treetops, yet she seemed to see something, and her forehead creased. A raven flew up to her shoulder. “Another storm is coming,” the raven said.
“Of course,” she replied. “But there’s something else. Something strange. And terrible.”
“In the village,” said the raven, as though he knew her mind.
“Something has come,” she said.
“No, it has always been.”
“Not always. But a long time. Longer than I’ve been alive.”
“Waiting?” croaked the raven. “Why?”
She shrugged. “Because some things wait.”
“The Sainnites came thirty-five years ago. Is this thing theirs?”
“Yes, they brought it with them.”
After this firm declaration, raven and woman both were silent. Then, she took a deep breath and added heavily, “It is my problem now.”
“Ark!” exclaimed the raven with mocking surprise.
“Oh, shut up.”
“Coward,” he retorted.
With a sweep of the hand she flung the bird off her shoulder. He landed in the snow, squawking with laughter.
&nbs
p; “Tell Emil what I am doing,” she told him.
She left her ax and strode off through the snow, between the crowded trees. She could see the storm coming: a looming black above, trailing a hazy scarf of snowfall. She walked towards it.
In the attic of the nearby stone cottage, Medric the seer dreamed of Raven, the god of death. “I will tell you a story, but you must write the story down,” said Raven. Medric went to his battered desk and found there a fresh candle burning, and a newly trimmed pen, which he dipped into an inkwell. “What shall I title this story?” he asked.
“Call it ‘The Raven’s Joke,’” said the god, and began: “One day, Raven was bored . . .”
Downstairs from the seer’s book-filled attic, a little girl was very busy. She had been induced to take a bath that morning, but now had smudges of dirt on her wool smock, and a spider web, complete with dead bug, tangled in her hair. The woman who sat on the hearth studying a book paid no attention as the girl rummaged through cupboards and closets, while conversing with the battered stuffed rabbit whose head poked out of her shirt pocket.
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