Fire Logic el-1

by J. Marks Laurie

  Only in winter did the sky seem at once so bright and so dark. The sharp-edged lights of the night sky crowded down upon the frozen earth, but their fires were cold. When it came time to leave the road and go east among the trees, a steady shower of dislodged snow flung itself at them, like sparks falling from the stars’ bitter fires. Zanja began to shiver again, and all her many disciplines could not keep her attention from wandering down unlikely and devious paths, which more often than not brought her up short at a shattered ravine where something had happened that she could not and did not wish to remember.

  The horse also was wandering, indifferent to the stars that Zanja wanted him to follow, trying only to find the route of the shallowest snow and fewest trees. Zanja had not the strength to force him to do differently, and she wondered if they were lost, and how they might hope to be found on such a night. Then she ceased to be interested in such questions.

  Some time later, she fell into a snowdrift, and lay there in a vast confusion of mind. The horse’s big hooves stamped down not a handspan from her head, and for a moment she thought she lay once again in the Asha Valley, under the hooves of a Sainnite warhorse. There were yellow flames and an angry voice shouting, and then the horse blundered away. A lantern glared into her eyes, and beside it glared the scarred, narrow-lipped, hard-eyed face of a warrior, who seemed to be deciding the best way to make an end of her.

  Lord Death flapped into the light. “She is under Karis’s protection!”

  “Karis is a fool!” The warrior tossed the raven roughly aside. She took Zanja by the arm, and jerked her out of the drift. Zanja landed in a tangle, but struggled to her knees. The warrior was going to strike her, and if Zanja ducked the blow the woman would draw the wicked dagger that, for now at least, remained sheathed. Zanja drew herself up to accept the fist instead. The blow never landed, and so she had leisure to remember what it was like to strike someone who neither flinched nor fought back. She had only ever hit someone like that once, and never forgot the shame of it. So now this warrior restrained herself, perhaps also remembering other blows struck in rage that she later had cause to regret.

  The warrior said, after a moment, “You’re a smart woman, whoever you are.”

  Zanja would have gotten to her feet then, if she could have, and faced this worthy opponent eye to eye and blade to blade. Even were she at the peak of strength and skill she likely would be defeated, but it would be an education worth its price in spilled blood and injured pride. Scarcely had she thought this when the warrior’s scarred face creased with a grim amusement, and she unceremoniously hauled Zanja up and dragged her to the lightweight sledge that stood nearby, and dumped her into it like a load of potatoes. “How is Karis?”

  The man she spoke to knelt at Karis’s feet with a lantern nearby, feeling her bare toes with ungloved hands. He seemed unsurprised by the warrior’s abruptness and violence. “She’s fine, Norina. A touch of frostbite, nothing serious. Why did you never tell me your friend is a smoke addict? It explains so much…” He glanced over at Zanja, and his eyes widened. “Shaftal’s Name!”

  He left Karis to the brisk attentions of the warrior, and beat the snow out of Zanja’s clothing, then wrapped her in a bearskin robe. “What happened to you? You’re naught but bone in skin.”

  “Captivity,” Zanja said.

  “Drink some of this, if you can.” He uncorked a small jug and gave it to her to drink. “I am J’han, of the Order of Healers.”

  Zanja let him feel her hands and breast, but stopped him when he reached for the heavy socks that Karis had given her. “Don’t touch my feet.”

  “What?”

  She could hardly blame him for being so bewildered, but the warrior’s hand appeared suddenly on the healer’s shoulder, and the woman said, “J’han, I guess I need to talk privately to—”

  “This is Zanja,” he murmured automatically, as though introducing friends at a festival.

  “Just a few words with her.”

  The healer climbed out of the sledge and walked out of earshot, shaking his head all the while. “What did Karis do to you?” Norina said.

  Zanja said, “When Karis found me, I was paralyzed. My back was broken. My flesh was rotting. Half my toes had been hacked off.”

  Norina snatched off one of Zanja’s socks and looked at what Zanja did not want the healer to see: the incongruous, soft pink toes that lay against the others like replacement boards in a weathered barn. She muttered, “Karis, I will eviscerate you.”

  “You’ll have to kill me first.”

  “And how difficult would thatbe? Listen: You were wise to keep J’han from realizing what power is at work here. And you’d be unwise to irritate me further. The way to guarantee that I don’t simply toss you back into that snowdrift would be for you to promise to do whatever I tell you to do.“

  “I give you my word that I will do as you say,” Zanja said.

  “Good. Start by continuing to keep your mouth shut.” She put dry socks on Zanja’s feet, and called the healer back to the sledge. He came leading the hang-headed plow horse, which barely seemed able to drag his feet through the snow, and tied the lead to the back of the sledge.

  “We’ll go now,” Norina said.

  The man seemed to know better than to demand an explanation from her. He simply got into the sledge, and drew up a lap robe over his legs.

  They reached a small stone cottage tucked among the hills, which had a chimney wall dividing its two rooms, kitchen at one side and bedroom at the other. In the bedroom, Norina stripped Karis naked beside the fire, tossing her wet clothing onto the floor, carelessly revealing a magnificence of muscle and form that might make a sculptor weep. With Karis folded into the too-small bed, then it was Zanja’s turn to be stripped and dumped into a scalding bath, where she could not avoid seeing what the Sainnites had done to her. Beneath the grime, which at least could be washed away, her loose skin bagged over wasted muscle. Her joints seemed too big, like swollen knobs on slender branches. Her breasts had fallen flat upon her rib cage; her face, which never had been soft, felt like a skull under her fingertips. Her teeth even were loose, though by some stroke of good fortune none had fallen out. This alien form was made only stranger by the restoration to which it had been subjected. All down her back and buttocks, sensitive pink skin patched the brown.

  Norina had left her alone, and came back in to find Zanja worn out with washing, too tired to resist or even to object when the hostile stranger washed her back and took on the project of her hair. Neither of them spoke, and Norina offered no gestures of pity, no matter what the sight of Zanja’s devastated body made her think. Brusque and efficient, she hauled Zanja out of the tub and sat her upon the hearth wrapped in a blanket, and called in the healer to help carry away the tub. She returned again in a while, with a bowl of broth. The smell of food brought Zanja out of her daze.

  Norina sat down upon a battered, three-legged stool that might have been older than the sagging stone walls within which they sheltered. Zanja said after a while, “I envy you your vigor.”

  The preoccupied, battle-scarred face turned as if surprised to find her a living being and not just a problem to be solved. She said, “You’ll recover faster than seems possible, and you’ll feel the effects of Karis’s immoderate generosity for years to come. What is your name again?”

  “I am Zanja na’Tarwem. I was Speaker for the Ashawala’i, but now my people are all dead.”

  After a long silence Norina said, “We have heard of the massacre of the Ashawala’i. You’re the only survivor that we know of.”

  “Perhaps there were others, but I expect they would have killed themselves. Pardon me—if I am to answer your questions, I want to know who is asking them and why.”

  Norina said, “The speaker for the Ashawala’i by tradition has the G’deon’s ear. Where did you serve as a diplomat, with the House of Lilterwess fallen?”

  “I looked out for my people’s interests in the northern border towns. Why is it
your business?”

  Norina looked up from her hands. The sardonic expression that the scar gave her face seemed much more pronounced. “You certainly are as incessantly polite and courteously insistent as any diplomat. But if you had a weapon your hand would be on it, am I right?”

  Zanja said softly, “No, Norina, I would never signal my intent so carelessly, and so sacrifice the advantage of surprise.”

  Norina looked amused, as a wolf is amused by the antics of the rabbit she chases. “Tell me how you came to be in the Sainnite prison.”

  Zanja could play the game no longer. Wearily, so that the angry woman would leave her alone and let her sleep, she answered her questions as well as she could, considering how little she could remember of the events that Norina seemed to find most interesting. With months of pain and solitude and near insanity lying between this present moment and the massacre of the Ashawala’i, it seemed a distant event in someone else’s life. She had become a ghost, and now Karis’s hand upon her heart had raised her from the dead and brought her forth into a new world, a new body, a new life. The past seemed irrelevant.

  As she struggled to remember those horrible, distant events, she gradually became unnerved by the dissecting quality of Norina’s gaze and the weird accuracy of her sharply honed questions. And then, looking up impatiently as Norina asked a third question about something Zanja had twice told her she did not remember, she realized that the unnerving quality of Norina’s gaze was not wholly unfamiliar to her.

  She interrupted herself, and said, “We have met before.”

  “Really. How long ago?”

  “How long has it been since the fall? Fifteen years?”

  Norina opened her mouth, then closed it again without asking a question. Zanja had actually managed to surprise her.

  Zanja said, “It was my first year to travel with the Speaker, my teacher. Do you remember, in the charterhouse, early in the morning, he was talking with Councilor Mabin? You came in to tell her you were ready to leave. You gathered her papers for her. I stood over by the tea table, watching you, unable to determine what you were. But the Speaker told me later that you are a Truthken.”

  Norina said indifferently, “Mabin and the Speaker were arguing.”

  “No, it was a cold but courteous conversation.”

  “I had just taken my vows.”

  “But you had no earring.”

  “It was just a few pages of paper.”

  “I remember thirty sheets, at least. I have wondered since then if she was writing her famous book— Warfare, is that its title?” Zanja added, forestalling Norina’s attempt to quiz her on further details, “You were dressed in black. There was a brisk fire in the fireplace. The sun was just rising.”

  Norina said coldly, “Well, there’s nothing wrong with your memory.”

  Zanja had thought it might help her cause to remind Norina of their common history. Now, she realized that she only had done herself harm, though she was too stupid with exhaustion to understand how, or why.

  Her bowl was empty, and she wished it full again, but with meat and potatoes this time, and some fruit and cheese besides. If not for raging hunger she would have fallen asleep where she sat.

  Norina finally said, “Your history is not important. I am charged with Karis’s protection, and you have come in like a snake under the walls I’ve built around her.”

  “Karis chose to walk out beyond those walls.”

  “It was no choice. Fire attracts earth, and like all earth elementals Karis is particularly drawn to broken things that only she can fix. Certainly, you were sorely broken.“

  Zanja looked up at the Truthken then. “If I had done this to myself just to trick her out of hiding, then you would be right to kill me, for I would be an abomination.”

  “And there the puzzle lies.” Norina stood up and took the bowl, and returned in a little while with meat and roast potatoes, an apple and a piece of cheese. Little wonder some people become convinced that Truthkens can read their every thought as clearly as though they had been spoken out loud. “J’han thinks I am insane,” Norina said, “and he asked me to warn you that rich food will give you the gripe. You should tell him tomorrow that it did, even though it won’t.” She gave Zanja her eating knife, a valuable Mearish blade with an edge of startling sharpness, and sat with her booted feet stretched out to the fire while Zanja wolfed down the food.

  Zanja had swallowed the last of the cheese and was struggling to keep her eyes open when Norina said quietly, “I wish I could make you my ally in protecting Karis, but we are at cross-purposes. No—” she held up a hand to forestall a protest. “I know you are virtuous and honorable and ready to die in her defense. I know that you have given her your loyalty, and that there is no truer friend than a fire blood. But your visions and passions and moments of insight would be like poison to her. So I have no choice except to keep you away from her. I don’t expect you to be willing.”

  Zanja said, “I don’t understand.”

  Norina sighed, and for a moment she seemed almost troubled. “I don’t know how to explain it in a way you could accept. Karis is vulnerable and irreplaceable. You are an unpredictable visionary. With vision comes risk. Therefore, you must be kept out of her life.”

  “Karis wants me.”

  “Karis wants much that she cannot have. And you would do well to remember that Truthkens are executioners.”

  Chapter Six

  Zanja awakened to pale light filtering through window shutters, and to the hushed crackling sound of cinders cooling in the fireplace. She had fallen asleep where she sat the night before, upon the hearth, naked, with a second blanket that she did not remember being tossed over her. Karis still slept restlessly among twisted blankets, with her legs hanging out over the end of the bed, but Norina was gone. Zanja used the chamber pot and considered the clothing—Norina’s clothing, she assumed—laid out nearby for her to wear. The linen shirt and drawers would be worn next to the skin. The underclothing tied with laces, but the woolen outer clothing, both tunic and breeches, fastened with horn buttons. She then discovered buttonholes at the tops of the hose, and had to undress again, so she could button the hose to the underdrawers. She tottered across the bedroom in this warm but peculiar attire, and opened the door to the kitchen. There, in the light spilling through an unshuttered window, J’han Healer sat yawning at the scarred kitchen table with a reed pen in his hand. Bowls of dried herbs, a mortar and pestle, and a beautiful brass scale lay within his reach.

  “You can walk!” he exclaimed.

  “Not well.” Zanja stumbled to the hearth, where her knees gave out.

  “There’s porridge already made; will you have some?” J’han tucked the pen behind his ear, and got up to serve her, following the porridge with warm milk and honey, several slices of buttered bread, and an infusion of herbs to build up her strength. He brought over a bucket of small green apples, and set it within her reach. “Have you had enough to eat?”

  He had put so much effort into feeding her that it would have been cruel to tell him she was still hungry. He returned to his seat at the table, where he weighed and measured herbs into folded paper packets, and sealed them with wax. Though the healers, once renowned hospitalers, had become hunted wanderers after the fall of the House of Lilterwess, this one, at least, seemed to have found more than a home for the winter, for he and Norina had briefly awakened Zanja in the middle of the night as they made love in the kitchen.

  He did not speak to Zanja again until she began to halfheartedly tear apart the mats in her hair. “Let me help—I’ll get a comb.”

  So she leaned her head weakly upon his knee, and he seemed happy enough with his task, employing every trick Zanja had ever heard of to keep from resorting to the scissors, even before she explained, in response to a question, that her hair was uncut because among her people shorn hair is the mark of the outcast. She liked him all the more when he did not seem troubled that she wept as he worked, and she would even have th
ought he had not noticed, except that he commented later, “Someone you loved must have once combed your hair.”

  “My brother Ransel,” she said. “He was killed near summer’s end.”

  “I’m sorry to hear it. My brother used to comb my hair too. It’s been years since I saw him last.”

  The healer had gotten up once to tend the fire, when the bedroom door opened suddenly, and Karis crouched through into the kitchen, red-eyed as a crapulous drunk. She dazedly examined the room as she fumbled with shirt buttons. Her wandering gaze chanced across Zanja’s face, and paused.

  “Try a swallow of this,” the healer said. He had leapt to his feet, and offered Karis an earthenware flask.

  “J’han,” Karis rasped in her smoke-ruined voice.

  J’han looked startled, as though he had not expected her to know his name.

  She sipped from the flask, and lifted a hand to her throat.

  “Those with Juras blood have such beautiful voices,” the healer said.

  Zanja looked at Karis, startled, as if she had not seen her before. She had heard of the Juras, a tribe of giants that were said to dwell far to the south of Shaftal, at the edge of a great waterless wasteland. It was said that the sound of their singing could cause the stars to tremble in the sky. Perhaps Karis’s voice could not be fully mended, but the ghost of its lost richness echoed now behind the hoarseness as she thanked him and then sat down heavily in a chair that was too small for her long frame. With a crease between her brows, she reached down to brush a thumb across Zanja’s tear-stained cheekbone. The gesture left Zanja speechless.

  “Can you eat yet?” J’han asked Karis.

  “Chew tongue,” she slurred.

  J’han seemed scarcely able to restrain his curiosity, and the corner of Karis’s mouth quirked a bit. “Angry Norina?”

  “She is on one of her rampages,” he admitted.

  “My fault.” Karis’s big, work-hardened hands folded together, finger by finger, and she rested her forehead upon this support as though she had much to think about. “Where is she?” she asked after a while.