Earth Logic

by Laurie J. Marks

  After a silence, one of the frightened soldiers said, “What kind of conversation?”

  “Hell, I don’t know. But I can talk—you all know that.”

  There was a startled silence, and then a burst of laughter. The soldiers began to leave, but they wanted to touch her first, as though she were some kind of luck charm. It took some time for the hall to empty. When they had finally dispersed, Clement opened Cadmar’s door, and went in. She said to the startled medics,” I just want to see him. I won’t touch him.”

  A window had been cracked open despite the cold, but it didn’t do much to relieve the ungodly stink of the room. Cadmar lay quiet in a neat bed, garishly illuminated by bright lamps. Everyone loses at least one battle, thought Clement, looking down at the fallen mountain of a man. Perhaps Cadmar had forgotten that, or had chosen to never know that one day he would be completely outmatched. “By a flea, eh?” she said soberly. “I guess I’ll have to take that as a warning.”

  A medic said, “There are never any fleas at midwinter, because of the cold. It’s very strange.”

  “Very strange,” she agreed.

  Cadmar struggled for a breath, and then lay still again.

  She reminded herself again that he had helped her, taught her, and supported her rise. But it all seemed long ago. She turned away.

  “I’ll be waiting in the hall,” she said.

  The light was rising. The ravens flew up in a crowd, uttering sharp cries that seemed like curses. They wheeled into the paling sky. One by one, as people followed the ravens out the narrow door, they looked up to check the time and weather. Garland thought it looked to be a fair day, tolerably cold, but bright for once. Leeba, still half asleep in J’han’s arms, peered up at the sky, like everyone else. “Where is the sun?” she asked.

  “It’s coming up over there.” He pointed eastward.

  She looked towards the east in sleepy amazement. “Why?” she asked.

  Karis was already walking away, down the street, bare-headed, with her coat unbuttoned. In her right hand she held a gigantic hammer: Its handle worn to fit her hand, scorched black by the heat of the metal it had shaped over many years. She wore no gloves. There was no time for Garland to run back in and find some for her.

  At Karis’s elbows, Norina and Emil took big steps to keep up with her. The others crowded along behind: the Paladins, adjusting their weapons and tightening up their buckles, Medric, waving ink-stained fingers and talking excitedly to no one in particular, J’han, attempting to explain the sunrise to his daughter, and Garland, with his pockets crammed with apples and biscuits and a nice wedge of cheese, in case anyone became hungry.

  They turned onto the main street. Citizens still in their nightclothes peered out their front doors at them. People who had kept watch on the street corners all night trotted up to talk with Mabin, and then ran off, on what errands Garland could not guess.

  The city smelled delicious, of roasted meat, onions, pastry crust, cinnamon and burnt sugar.

  J’han said vaguely, “But this isn’t a feast day.”

  “It’s a new feast day. The feast of following without knowing why.”

  “Rabbit wants to walk,” Leeba declared.

  “We’re practically running,” J’han said to her, more than a little out of breath. “Tell your rabbit to be patient.”

  “Rabbit knows.”

  “Well, tell the lizard, then. I don’t think he knows.”

  Leeba held the wooden lizard, and the stuffed rabbit peeked out of the front of her coat. She shook the lizard roughly and told him to be patient and to stop complaining.

  The trotted down the street. As they drew close to the garrison, the dawn bell began to ring.

  Clement had set a chair under an unshuttered, east-facing window, and had watched as the darkness became light. The signal-man squatted nearby with his back against the wall. The bugle hanging around his neck began to gleam, as though it were collecting every bit of this winter dawn’s sparse light.

  The dawn bell rang. Clement stood up abruptly and paced down the hallway, cursing under her breath.

  That Clement’s first words to the G’deon would be an explanation of why and how the storyteller had died in their custody was intolerable. What Emil had said about the necessity for the woman’s death had made no sense, and did not matter.

  Cadmar’s door opened. A haggard medic looked for her. “General Clement,” he said, “General Cadmar is dead.”

  “Come with me!” she said to the signal-man. And she ran, down the hollow hall, out the door, down the ice-slippery steps and into the road.

  The garrison was awake. She felt it: coiled, alert, listening.

  The snow that was piled high on either side of the road made the path through seem like a cave, a tunnel, paved with extraordinarily slippery stones. Somehow, Clement managed not to fall.

  In the distant yard that abutted the outer wall, four soldiers stood. In the middle of their circle, a slim gray figure knelt and obediently lay her head upon the block.

  Clement shouted at the signal man, “Stand down!” It was an order that should stop even a battle-mad soldier mid-stride, mid-blow. Gasping for breath, the bugler brought the bugle to his lips, but the noise that came out was an unrecognizable spurt of sound that to any listener would seem a meaningless accident.

  The sky seemed full of ravens.

  “Hell!” Clement cried helplessly. “Do not kill her! Do not kill her!” Her voice echoed back at her.

  The ax rose. The ax fell.

  The garrison wall burst open.

  Chapter 38

  Squatting on her heels, Zanja read Medric’s book until the water in her pot boiled. She had read the book many times, but it seemed different every time she read it. When the water boiled, she shut the book and steeped her tea. As she looked up from the porcelain pot with a poured cup of tea in her hand, she noticed the owl, perched atop a stone, gazing at her. The owl had the passionless, infinite eyes of a god. Surely, Zanja thought, the land in which she endlessly traveled was a place in the owl’s mind.

  “Salos’a, is it finally time for me to die?” she asked.

  The owl said, “You die painfully at every crossing. Yet you have never refused to cross. Why is that?”

  Zanja said, “Because it is my duty to my people.”

  “Speak again,” said the owl. “The truth this time.”

  “Because you named me a crosser of boundaries when I became a katrim.”

  “Speak again,” said the owl. “More accurately.”

  Zanja thought, and said at last, “Because crossing boundaries gives me joy.”

  “That is a good reason,” said the owl. “Remember it.”

  When Karis struck the wall, the hammer-head fractured like glass. The hammer handle shattered to splinters. Pieces of the hammer exploded out from Karis’s hand, burning as they flew from shadow into sunlight. The sound of that blow reverberated in Garland’s head. The feeling of it shook his joints loose, so he felt that he would collapse; that nothing could possibly remain standing.

  The stones of the wall simply let loose of each other. The wall fell down before Karis, nearly obscuring her in a shimmering cloud of shattered mortar and dislodged snow. Through the dust, Garland caught occasional glimpses of her: legs straddled, hands open, feet buried in restless rubble.

  Leeba shrieked wildly, “Look! Look at that! Oh!” She held the wooden lizard over her head, so that he could see. Stones crashed, cracked, and clattered. Beyond this racket, a bugle was sounding. Garland shouldered his way through the awestruck Paladins to Emil, on whose dust-caked face glowed the sunlight that broke through the widening breach in the wall.

  “Emil,” said Garland humbly, “that bugler is signaling the soldiers to stand down.”

  Emil rubbed dust and tears from his eyes. “To stand down? Well!” He grinned ferociously at the crumbling wall. “I guess even the Sainnites don’t want to know what it’s like for Karis to lose her temper.”

&
nbsp; The storyteller genuflected, folded neatly over her bent knees, with her hands tied behind her. Her face was crushed into the shattered ice that covered the block. Across her back sprawled the spread wings of a fallen raven.

  “Lieutenant-General Clement?” said the executioner. The wall was disintegrating beyond him, and he started nervously at every new crash.

  “General Clement,” she said. “Cadmar’s dead. What happened?”

  “The bird tangled with the ax.”

  “And what?”

  “The ax hit the block, not the prisoner.”

  “But she looks dead!”

  “I guess she’s fainted. Shall I—?” He hefted the ax.

  “Gods, no! Put that down.”

  Still gasping for breath, with the bugler still sounding his signal—half of the soldiers of the garrison seemed to have already arrived, but now stood back in a disorganized rabble—Clement unbuttoned her coat, to be used as a stretcher, and suddenly a dozen soldiers were there doing what she wanted, though she had not seen them arrive, and did not remember giving any orders. As the soldiers tucked the storyteller and the folded up raven into the coat, Clement called, “Signal man: honored guests in the garrison!”

  The puzzled bugler began playing the new signal. Ellid, who approached from a distance, flanked by several of her lieutenants, shouted, “General Clement! Your orders?”

  “Just follow me,” Clement said.

  They went plowing through the snow: Clement, starting to feel the cold; the senior officers pretending they knew what they were doing; the four soldiers, carrying the storyteller between them; and the bugler blaring away at the rear. All along the edge of the field, the captains were frantically getting their companies in order. For no apparent reason, the soldiers began to cheer.

  And then Clement realized they were cheering for her. It made no sense.

  And then it did make sense: those shouts made her feel like she could do anything. And by the gods, she needed to feel that way, or she was going to collapse just like the wall, right there in front of five hundred soldiers.

  She and her entourage reached the wall as another arm-span of it came crashing down. The breach was already as wide as three wagons, and where the wall had collapsed lay an ever-shifting and spreading field of restless rubble, of stones that rolled and rolled and did not rest until they were no longer touching any other stone.

  A rolling stone bumped into Clement’s foot. On the other side of the restless rubble stood a woman in a flapping red coat. At her right stood a lanky gray man with the fire of sunrise in his face. At her left stood a wiry, cool woman whose glance was like a sharp blade drawn across skin. Flanking her were a half dozen black-dressed, gold-earringed Paladins—not farmers with weapons, but the kind Gilly had once called deadly philosophers. Clement noticed Councilor Mabin, the ubiquitous runaway cook, a jumpy little man in sun-drenched spectacles, a sturdily built man with a joyous, shrieking little girl in his arms. And beyond them were gathering astonished townsfolk, with their coats thrown on over nightclothes and their bare feet jammed into boots they hadn’t taken the time to strap up.

  Clement started forward across the unsteady stones. Karis met her in the middle. Her unbuttoned coat revealed plain work clothes, and a belt from which small tools dangled and danced: a folding rule, a fat pencil, a utilitarian little knife. Her boots looked as if they had walked down every last one of Shaftal’s god-awful roads.

  She offered her bare hand. Clement clasped it, and felt like she had grabbed hold of a piece of hot iron.

  “The war is over,” Karis said.

  The stones heaved underfoot. The soldiers were shouting Clement’s name. “The war is over,” Clement affirmed, as definitely as she could manage to say such a preposterous thing.

  The cold woman at Karis’s left turned to face Shaftal. She cried, in a voice that seemed trained to carry long distances, “The war is over!”

  Clement glanced backwards at Ellid, who had climbed up the rock pile behind her. “Signal peace. Make bloody sure the soldiers act happy about it.”

  “Yes, general.”

  Clement turned back to face the steady, implacable gaze of Shaftal. “Do you want to discuss some details?”

  A deep humor came into the face of the man at Karis’s other side. Three earrings—a Paladin general. Emil, Clement realized.

  Karis said, “The Sainnites will not be harmed or attacked, and you will not harm or attack the people of Shaftal. The people of Shaftal will offer you the hospitality of strangers and eventually the hospitality of friends.”

  The rocks slipped away from under Clement’s feet, but the powerful grip on her hand balanced her. The cold woman at Karis’s left said, “General, say that you will do whatever is necessary to make these things happen.”

  Clement opened her mouth to speak, and then there was a great, terrible pause.

  “I am a Truthken,” The cold woman said, answering a question Clement had not asked.

  Clement said, “I have to tell you, I don’t know how to make peace. I can’t be certain that all the garrisons will follow me. And I may only be general for a few months.”

  The Truthken’s expression became distinctly appreciative. “I understand these qualifications.”

  Clement said, “I will do whatever is necessary to make peace with Shaftal.”

  “Karis, the general declares a sincere intention.”

  “Oh, we’ll solve these problems,” Karis said.

  The bugler had begun sounding a sequence of notes that had never been heard in Shaftal. Clement couldn’t even be certain her soldiers knew what the signal meant. But Ellid had also sent her officers in person to pass the word, and the soldiers’ voices were a rising roar. On the other side of the wall there also rose up a growing wave of cheers. A bell had begun to peal.

  Surely, Clement thought belatedly, none of this is possible. It cannot possibly be so simple as this.

  Karis said, “What happened to the storyteller?”

  Clement said, “A raven got in the way of the ax. It missed her entirely. But she seems to be unconscious.”

  The gray man uttered an exclamation. “Karis, why did you interfere? How many times must we make up our minds to kill her?”

  “One last time, Emil,” Karis said.

  “Are you the one who’s managing this business of feeding the garrison? We’re ready with the bread.”

  Garland was being addressed by a rather floury woman, who had seen fit to tuck under her arm a hot loaf of bread, which crackled and steamed in the chill. She brought him into a wonderful conversation about butter and jam with a dozen other people. Then Medric blundered into the crowd of cooks, his vision obscured by a paste of snow and powdered lime. “Is Garland here? I’ve got to get to Karis. Useless bloody spectacles!”

  Garland took him by the elbow, saying irritably, “If you would just ask Karis to mend your vision, you could throw the spectacles away.”

  That startled Medric into a moment’s silence, but then he responded firmly, “Just because she can fix everything doesn’t mean she should. Get me over these rocks, brother.”

  As they tripped and stumbled their way across the spreading carpet of rock, Medric said, “Can you see Karis? What is she doing?”

  “She’s on her knees in the snow. There’s a raven beside her—it looks like it’s dead. She has a woman, a body, in her arms. It must be Zanja. Gods, does Karis get to feel not even a moment’s triumph?”

  Medric swayed wildly from side to side. “What in Shaftal’s Name has she done to these rocks? This wall will never be finished falling! I would not have expected her, of all people, to be so immoderate!”

  Garland said, “Norina’s unbuttoning her coat to get at her dagger.”

  Medric shouted shrilly, “Gods of hell! Karis! Don’t let her do it!” Arm waving wildly for balance, he added, “Did they hear me?”

  Emil had turned; he noticed their approach. He lay a hand on Norina’s arm. “Emil heard,” Garland s
aid.

  “Of course he heard,” Medric said. “He’s a listening sort of man! Are we anywhere near them yet? How long do these bloody rocks continue?”

  “The snow’s next,” Garland said. “Here we go.”

  They waded past Sainnite officers, who clustered intently around their rapidly-talking new general. Emil had come through the snow to meet them, and took Medric’s other elbow. “Karis says her heart is still beating, but the spirit is gone. She says she just needed to know for herself. And now she does know.”

  “But she only knows what her hands can tell her,” Medric said. “She can’t know that the storyteller is dead because she was expecting to be killed. But think, Emil, think of what’s possible now!”

  “Think?” said Emil. “At this moment?”

  “Must we go through this again?” said Norina impatiently as they drew up to her.

  “Here’s Karis,” Garland said, and put Medric’s hand onto her shoulder.

  The limp woman lay in Karis’s arms. A piece of cut rope hung from one of the woman’s wrists, and a long, slender braid of her hair trailed across the snow. Garland remembered her vividly: her silence, her alert, fierce attention, her astonishing courtesy, and the extremely pared down beauty of her sharp-edged face. But now she merely looked dead.

  Karis raised her bowed head. “What, master seer?” she said. Her voice, her face, her eyes, all were terribly calm.

  Medric felt blindly for the woman’s head, picked up the long braid, and wrapped it several times around one of Karis’s hands. “If this hair were a rope, and Zanja were dangling at the end of it, what would you do?”

  Karis looked blankly at her hand. And then she closed her fist over the slender braid, and pulled.

  The barren land of the unending mountains sped past below. The sun popped into the sky and popped down again. Day became night in the blink of an eye. Dizzy, sick, numb, shouting with pain, Zanja dangled by the hair from the claws of her god. Faster and faster, the owl flew. Time passed in a blur, thousands of nights. She cried, “Salos’a, when will this journey end?”