A man came into the parlor, looked vaguely around, and said to the woman on the hearth, “You’re letting the fire go out.”
The woman reached for a log and put it onto the coals without taking her eyes off the stained page of the ancient book. Her dark skin, hair, and eyes; her narrow, sharp features; and her long, complexly braided hair identified her as a katrim of the otherwise extinct Ashawala’i people. The book she studied was written entirely in glyphs; few could have made sense of the arcane text.
“Leeba, why have you taken my ink?” the man asked the little girl.
“I need it,” she declared.
“I need it also. What do you need it for? You have neither paper nor pen.”
“I need it for my journey. When I reach a place, I’ll ask the people there if they need anything. And if they need some ink, I’ll sell it to them. By the time I come home, I’ll have a hundred pennies.”
“A hundred pennies? Well, let’s see. How much were you going to charge for this lovely bottle of ink?”
There followed an impromptu numbers lesson. The woman on the floor rubbed her eyes, for the fireplace was smoking. Finally, she looked up from her book to push the split log further into the fireplace, and to blow on it vigorously until the flames caught. The man went out, and came back in with a sheet of paper and a pen. He said to his daughter, “Loan me some ink, I’ll make some pennies to pay you with.”
The woman studied the page, frowning—or, perhaps, scowling—with concentration. A few of the numerous slender plaits of her hair had slipped over her shoulder and looped across the page like lengths of black yarn.
The man paid for his bottle of ink with fifteen paper pennies. “Zanja,” he said.
“Don’t bother me,” the woman said.
He bent over to examine the symbol at which she glared. “My land! What are you reading?”
“Koles.”
“The poet? No wonder you’re surly. The poetry students at Kisha University used to swear he had randomly copied glyphs out of a lexicon.”
“ There’s always a pattern. Even if the poet himself didn’t believe he had a reason, or didn’t know what his reason was.” Her voice trailed off into abstraction, and she abruptly reached for something that she expected to find dangling from her belt. “My glyph cards!”
“Leeba!” said J’han, horrified.
Leeba interrupted her cheerful humming. “Thirty pennies,” she demanded.
“Oh, dear,” said J’han, as Zanja uncoiled upward from her seat on the hearth.
But the little girl looked up fearlessly as Zanja plucked a pack of cards from her collected goods. “Your daughter is a thief,” said Zanja to J’han.
“I’m your daughter too,” Leeba protested.
A smile began to do battle with Zanja’s glare. “You are? How long have I had a daughter? How did it happen?”
Leeba clasped her by the knees, grinning up at her. “Thirty pennies!” she demanded.
“Extortion!”
“I’ll buy them for you,” said J’han hastily. “In gratitude. For not strangling her. Thirty pennies, Leeba?” He began counting paper pennies.
Zanja protested, “It’s too much. Look at these worn-out old cards! They’ve been dunked in water, smeared with mud and grease, and—this is a bloodstain, I believe.”
“There must be some sweat-stains too,” said J’han. He paid his daughter, took the cards out of Zanja’s hand, and then presented them back to her. “A humble token of my esteem and gratitude.”
Zanja was still smiling as she knelt again on the hearth, tugged the book safely out of range of the crackling flames, and began laying out glyph cards.
Leeba, who came over to watch Zanja lay out the cards, said eagerly, “It’s a story!”
“ It’s a story with half its pieces missing. In fact—” she shuffled through the deck. “—Did you take one of the cards? A picture of a person standing halfway in a fire?”
“No.” Leeba sat beside her on the hearth, and leaned against her. “There’s a girl,” she said, pointing at the card called Silence. “Why is she so sad?”
“Maybe she has no one to play with.”
Through this method of question and answer, the sad girl’s story was revealed: how she got herself in trouble due to the lack of a playmate, and how her toy rabbit came alive after being fed a magical tea from a miniature tea pot, Leeba leapt up and ran out of the room. J’han, who had been drawing again, commented, “I certainly hope that Emil’s traveling tea set is well hidden. Is this a suitable replacement for the missing card?”
He handed her a stiff piece of paper, on which he had carefully drawn the glyph called Death-and-Life, or the Pyre, in the lower left hand corner. Above and around the ancient symbol, he had drawn an anatomically convincing picture of a person half in, half out of a burning fire. The half that was in the fire was skeleton; the other half was a very muscular woman with what appeared to be a bush growing on her head.
Zanja gazed at it until J’han began apologetically, “It’s not very artistic.”
“It looks like Karis,” Zanja said.
“It does?” He looked at his own drawing in surprise. “I guess that makes sense. It is the G’deon’s glyph, after all. It’s natural I would draw her.”
In the kitchen, there was the distinct, familiar sound of disaster, followed by the equally familiar sound of Norina losing her temper. J’han rose from his squat, saying mildly, “Hasn’t Leeba learned not to drop a kettle when that mother is in the room?” He went off to make peace in the kitchen.
Zanja said to his back, too softly for him to hear, “Karis is everything. But she’s not the G’deon.”
The parlor windows double-shuttered against the cold, shut out the light as well. J’han had drawn his pictures by lamplight, but he had thriftily blown out the flame as he left. Now gloom descended, and silence. By flickering firelight, Zanja studied the newly drawn glyph card in her hand. She felt no pity for the woman paralyzed in the flame.
The glyphic illustrations often gave Zanja a path to self-knowledge, but at this moment she was reluctant to acknowledge that she might be pitiless and impatient. For four-and-a-half years—Leeba’s entire life—Zanja and Karis had been lovers. Yet Zanja understood Karis less with every passing year. Like the woman in the pyre, who was neither completely consumed nor fully created, Karis remained inexplicably contented. Zanja was the one who could not endure this inaction.
She heard Emil return from his weekly trip to town. With much stamping on the door mat, he announced unnecessarily that it was snowing, and added that according to his watch, which he knew was accurate since he had just set it by the town clock, it was time for tea. Leeba loudly demanded magic tea for her rabbit. The racket brought Medric blundering sleepily down the stairs, to plaintively ask for help finding his spectacles.
“I’m afraid Leeba took them,” J’han said. He called rather desperately, “Zanja!”
“I’m coming.” She extricated both pairs of Medric’s spectacles in Leeba’s pile, and forced herself to leave the quiet parlor and step into the chaotic kitchen. There Medric, even more tousled and beleaguered than usual, stood near the stairway peering confusedly into the cluttered room, where Emil fussed over the teapot, Norina sliced bread for J’han to toast, and Leeba managed to be in everyone’s way. Zanja set a pair of spectacles onto Medric’s nose and put the other into his pocket. “Wrong!” he declared, and, having exchanged the pair in his pocket for the pair on his nose, asked, “Do you think there might be something a bit disordered about our lives?”
“We’ve got too much talent and not enough sense.”
“Really? Is that possible? Well, if you say so.” He added vaguely, “Your raven god has been telling me a story about himself. Why is that, do you suppose?”
“Whatever Raven told you,” Zanja said, “Don’t believe a word of it.”
Medric managed to appear simultaneously entertained and offended. “I’m not a complete idiot. Not more
than halfway, I shouldn’t think. I certainly know an untrustworthy god when I meet one!”
Medric had spoken loudly in his own defense, and everyone in the room stopped working to stare at him. Norina displayed her usual expression of unrestrained skepticism, which was only enhanced by the old scar that bisected one cheek and eyebrow. Emil gazed at Medric with amusement and respect. “That is a bizarre pronouncement.”
“Isn’t it?” An underdeveloped wraith of a man, Medric had to stretch to get his mouth near Zanja’s ear. He whispered, “Raven’s joke: nothing changes.”
She looked at him sharply, but he had already swept Leeba up in a madman’s dance dizzy enough to put all thoughts of magic tea right out of the little girl’s head.
The last time Zanja heard the Ashawala’i tale of Raven’s Joke, she had been huddled with her clan in a building much more crowded than this one, while the snow, piled higher than the roof, insulated them against the howling wind of a dreadful storm. To her people, the tale had made sense of the maddening stasis of winter. Now, perhaps Medric’s vision was admonishing her for her impatience. Or perhaps it was congratulating her for it.
Where’s Karis?” asked Norina.
Emil looked surprised. “You don’t know? A raven told me she had gone to town, though I didn’t see her there.”
The toast was buttered, the tea poured, and the letters distributed from the capacious pockets of Emil’s greatcoat. All three men had received letters, for they each kept up a voluminous correspondence. Today, even Norina had a letter, which she viewed with doubtful surprise and seemed disinclined to open. Zanja helped Leeba with her milk and spread jam on her toast, then lay out the glyph cards again.
Once again, she studied Leeba’s sad girl, the glyph called Silence. To Zanja, silence signified thought, but to Karis it might signify inarticulacy. What has Silence to do with the Pyre, Zanja wondered? In the Pyre, death becomes life; life becomes death. But if nothing changes, the fire cannot do its work of transformation. Thus the person in the pyre is trapped between death and life, and cannot speak at all, not even to say, Help me.
In the hush, it almost seemed Zanja could hear the snowflakes floating down and settling outside the door. She was aware that Medric, across the table from her, was only pretending to read his letter. Then, Norina, who had finally broken the seal of her letter, uttered a snort, Emil grunted, and J’han folded up a letter with apparent satisfaction. “The trade in smoke appears to be in a serious decline,” he announced.
“Of course it is,” said Emil. “Haven’t you healers cured almost every smoke addict in the land, now that you know how to do it?” He tapped his own letter with a fingertip. “Here’s something downright strange. Willis, from South Hill—do you recall him?”
Medric had known of Willis but had never met him, Norina had met him only once, and J’han might not remember who he was and what he had done. Zanja responded, though, as if Emil’s question had been directed to her. “Willis? Wasn’t he the one who shot me, beat me, imprisoned me, called me a traitor, and nearly had me killed? No, I had completely forgotten him.”
“I am extremely surprised to hear that,” said Emil gravely. “Listen to what my South Hill friend wrote to me: “’We have received some word of Willis at last. He claims to have had a vision of the Lost G’deon! Apparently, he has formed a company of his own, for he believes he has been chosen to single-handedly lead the people of Shaftal in a final battle that will eliminate every last trace of the Sainnites from the land.’”
There was a long, amazed silence. Zanja sat back in her chair and began to laugh. “Oh, Emil, write a letter to Willis and tell him exactly where the Lost G’deon is, and what she is doing.”
“Wouldn’t you rather tell him yourself?” asked Emil with a grin.
“My letter is just as peculiar,” said Norina. “Listen to this: “I must speak with Karis on a matter of some urgency. I beg you, in the name of Shaftal, to convince her to meet with me as soon as the weather permits travel, in a place of her choosing. Signed, Mabin, Councilor of Shaftal, General of Paladins.’”
Emil, who had just picked up his teacup, set it down again rather sharply. “I don’t believe it.”
Norina passed him the letter. He examined it closely. “Well, it appears to be Mabin’s handwriting.”
Norina said, “If Mabin thinks Karis will even be in the same region with her—”
“Mabin must think you can change her mind.”
Norina snorted. “Well, the Councilor is under a misapprehension.”
Medric, to protect his unstable insight, did not drink tea and avoided both fat and sweets, so he had nothing to eat but a piece of dry toast that he had torn into bits. He now sat very quietly with his palms together and his fingertips against his mouth. He returned Zanja’s glance, and his spectacles magnified the intentness of his gaze. Even without the seer’s expectant look, all these significant letters would have seemed like portents to Zanja. At last, something was going to happen!
Then, they heard the sound of Karis stamping the snow off her boots outside the door. Leeba leaped up, shrieking with joy, making every mug and cup on the table rattle ominously. A flurry of snow followed Karis into the house. The door seemed disinclined to shut, but could not resist her. Karis let Emil help her out of her coat, and bent over so Leeba could brush the snow out of her tangled thicket of hair. The room had shrunk substantially; the furniture looked like toys; even lanky Emil seemed reduced to the size of a half-grown child. If Karis had stood upright, her head would have dented the plaster. But it was not the mere impact of her size that made the house itself seem to stretch itself, gasping.
Perhaps Karis was immovable, thought Zanja, but she also was unstoppable.
Karis’s kiss tasted of snow. “Zanja, the ravens would have told you where I had gone, but you didn’t venture out the door. What was I to do? Send a poor bird down the chimney?”
Emil had pulled out a chair for Karis. The chair groaned under her weight, and groaned again as Leeba crawled into her lap. Zanja pushed over her own untasted toast and untouched cup of tea, both of which Karis dispatched before Emil could bring her the teapot and bread plate.
“There’s an illness in town,” Karis said. “And there’s going to be a lot more of it. And not just here.” She tapped a forge-blackened fingertip on the tabletop. “Here,” she said. “Here. And here.”
J’han examined the table’s surface as though he could see the map of Shaftal that to Karis was as real and immediate as the landscape outside the door.
“And here,” Karis added worriedly, tapping a finger in the west.
Leeba peered at the table top, then up at Karis. “What’s wrong with the table?”
“Illness doesn’t spread like that,” J’han objected. “Not in winter, anyway. Sick people can’t travel far in the snow—so illness doesn’t travel far, either.” He frowned at the scratched, stained surface of the table.
“It was already there,” Karis said. “It was waiting.”
“Then it could be waiting in other places, too.”
“Yes.”
J’han stood up. “I’ll start packing.”
Karis nodded. She said belatedly to her daughter, “Leeba, there’s nothing wrong with the table.”
“You said the table is sick!”
“No, it’s Shaftal that’s sick.”
Leeba looked dubiously at the tabletop.
Emil, busy smearing jam on toast almost as fast as Karis could eat it, gave Zanja a thoughtful, level look. He was worrying about Shaftal—he always was. How will this illness affect the balance of power in Shaftal? He was probably wondering. Will it show us a way to peace?
Zanja plucked a card from her deck, but the glyph her fingers chose to lay down on the table did not seem like an answer to Emil’s unspoken question. It was the Wall, usually interpreted as an insurmountable obstacle: an obdurate symbol that in a glyph pattern often meant utter negation. She could not think of what, if anything, the glyp
h might mean at this moment.
From the other side of the table, Medric said, “That glyph looks upside-down to me.”
“Maybe you’re upside-down,” Zanja said.
“Maybe you are,” Medric replied solemnly.
Zanja considered that comment. If it was intended as a criticism, it certainly was gentle enough. She said to Karis, “I’m coming with you and J’han.”
Before Karis could reply, Medric said, “Pack carefully, Zanja. I’ll go copy a few pages of Koles for you to bring with you. It’ll keep you preoccupied for months.”
“For months?” Karis asked sharply.
Medric waggled his eyebrows. “Oh, and I’ve thought of another book you had better bring along.” He headed back upstairs to his library. A notorious waster of time, he could be quite efficient when he had to be.
Norina said, “Karis, you have to look at this letter and tell me what to do with it.” She pushed it across the table.
As Zanja left the kitchen to start packing, Karis was already reading Mabin’s letter. In a moment, Zanja heard her utter a sharp shout of laughter.
Chapter 2
In the hot kitchen of the Smiling Pig Inn, Garland had finished feeding everyone and was starting the stock for tomorrow’s soup when the serving girl bustled into the hot kitchen and informed him that a dozen people had just arrived. They had taken all the places closest to the fire, which had left the regular customers feeling put out. Garland had to make a lot of fried potatoes, and the girl nagged him to hurry up. “Give them some soup,” he told her. “You know they’ll complain even louder if I serve them scorched raw potatoes.”
“No one’s fussier about their food than you are,” The girl said, and Garland took that as a compliment. She filled bowls with bean soup and would have forgotten to sprinkle them with bacon crumbs and caramelized onions if Garland hadn’t stopped her. She complied, rolling her eyes with exasperation.
Earth Logic Page 2
