Air Logic

by Laurie J. Marks

  It was a mourning song of the people, but Zanja had never heard it.

  She ran into the firestorm. Her warrior braids fell from their knot, and like candle wicks they caught on fire. Yet she ran through flames to save that wailing infant, to save her clan, her people, from destruction. She ran through the blazing curtain of the clan house, and fire clothed her. She snatched her son from the flames and fled with him. Outside the inferno, she laid him down in a safe place. And then, in agony, she slowly died.

  “What is it like to die?” the poet asked.

  “Lonely,” she said.

  Her lost son wore clothing of ashes, and his warrior braids were burning. How could he have survived?

  She said, “I never saved an infant from the inferno.”

  He spoke to her with words of smoke. He held before her gaze a charred page from the lexicon.

  It was the Lonely Girl, who sat on an ornate bench, in a fantastic hallway of high, arched walls, with every surface covered by brilliant decoration. In this clutter of color, she was a simple, plain shape: not a vacancy, but rather a possibility. She gazed somberly out of the page, with a curved sword across her knees. Born of a Truthken, raised in a family of elementals, she was a kernel; and they were the protective shell. But they in turn were protected by the harsh, rich land of Shaftal. And Shaftal was a kernel in the world.

  Leeba, the Lonely Girl. Leeba, the wailing infant in the burning clan house. The child who must be saved, in order to save everything.

  Trembling with exhaustion and fear, Zanja returned to the woods. She used Medric’s string to suspend the glyph cards from the branch of an ancient tree, so that water would not destroy her cards again. But in the satchel over her shoulder she still carried Medric’s spectacles, Emil’s pen that she had taken from his body, J’han’s packet of strengthening herbs, and some crumbs of Garland’s travel bread. She carried Norina’s dagger at her belt, and she carried Karis in her blood and bone.

  All else she left behind.

  Chapter 42

  Tashar dreamed of his marvelous sky boat, flying bravely and beautifully across the sky, gazed at in amazement by all the people of Shaftal, whose cries of wonder rose up like bird calls, until a gigantic, leafy hand reached up from the woodland, snatched the ship out of the air, and crushed it. He awakened, weeping.

  Dawn was rising. Humiliated by his tears, Tashar looked hastily at Maxew, but his hateful companion slept undisturbed and dreadful in the pale light: one eye black and swollen, his nose purple, puffy, grotesque.

  Tashar got up, groaning, from his miserable bed of leaf mold. He felt like he had been beaten by a gang of thieves armed with staves. He took the ball of string from the bag of supplies that the crazy border woman had thrown at them, tied the string around a branch, and went into the woody tangle. When his string had played out, he followed it back to Maxew, then went forth in another direction. On the fourth try, he discovered a pool that was leaf-choked, scummed over, and crowded with tiny frogs that scrambled over each other in a panic when he dipped fingers in and licked it to check if the water was drinkable.

  It tasted of dirt and mold.

  In the House of Lora, barrels of spring water had been delivered fresh every day.

  He dipped the tin into the water, using his fingers to screen out the creatures and the stringy algae. As he staggered back to his feet, he thought he saw movement, a light-footed shadow slipping into invisibility at the corner of his eye. Then there was nothing, just the tangle of wind-crushed trees, a flash of bird’s wings, bright sunrise, and black shadows.

  He fled, following the string trail, back to Maxew, who now sat upright, holding his head.

  “She’s following us!”

  “Who?” Maxew’s voice was muffled as if with a dreadful cold. His smashed face must hurt awfully, but Tashar could not pity the bastard.

  “The border woman! The G’deon’s wife!”

  “She won’t leave Emil.”

  “Perhaps not if he were alive. But you killed him.”

  In Maxew’s sharp movement, and in the anger that flared in his battered face, Tashar read that he knew he had made a mistake by allowing Emil to die. “If Zanja wanted vengeance she would have killed us already,” he said.

  “But I just saw her.”

  “You saw your own fear.” Maxew got up, awkward and stiff as an arthritic old man. “The sun’s still low enough to be a reliable compass.”

  On the previous day, they had argued all afternoon about their direction of travel. When evening threw some long, eastward-pointing shadows across the debris, they had seen that both of them had been wrong.

  They had divided the food, but Tashar carried everything else, because Maxew would have left it all behind. He slung the heavy water tins over his shoulder, put the sunrise at his back, and began the grim struggle westward.

  The border woman, the false G’deon’s tragic, ferocious wife—Maxew himself had said she was crazy. And in this world of sideways trees that tangled in each other like balls of yarn the kittens had gotten hold of, that insanity seemed reasonable to Tashar. The crazy woman had given them enough supplies to make them think they could survive, and now she was hunting them, and torturing them, for vengeance.

  If only she would finish her game! This slow, painful struggle through the unyielding chaos had become unendurable. They should be flying!

  Thinking of his lost ship, Tashar felt more than willing to lie down and die; he just needed someone to help him with the last part.

  Time passed very slowly. When the sun had finished rising, they stopped to rest and eat. Tashar considered whether to save half of his remaining food so he could eat again in the evening. But if Maxew ran out of food first, he could enspell Tashar and take his share. Tashar ate all the food, spitefully. Maxew lay on his back with a wet cloth on his battered face, oblivious to Tashar’s confused hatred.

  Tashar said, “She’s a witch. She must be.”

  “Who?” As though their earlier conversation had never happened!

  “That woman who’s following us.”

  “She isn’t—!” Maxew put a hand to his face—angry speech seemed to be especially painful. “She merely has a fire talent, and it controls her. She can’t control it.”

  “She knew we would crash, and she knew where.”

  “No, you idiot. We crashed where she already was.”

  “You’re saying that the storm was magical? Then you’re the idiot, because no magic controls weather.”

  “Water magic controls wind, weather, water, time, music, and mathematics.”

  Tashar had always assumed that water magic existed, but if there were any water witches, every one of them lived in secret. Yet a witch who could control the wind and weather could have lived in luxury in the House of Lora, or any of the shipping houses. A shipping house that was invulnerable to storms and independent of the wind would soon control the entire shipping trade. It would control Shaftal. It would own Shaftal.

  And Tashar would fly wherever he liked, for he would always be guaranteed a friendly wind.

  He was shocked out of his fantasy by a sound, distant but distinct. Maxew sat up sharply.

  “A dinner gong?” Tashar said stupidly.

  “It was that way.” Maxew pointed.

  “No, that way.”

  They glared at each other with hatred and contempt. The gong sounded again, and Tashar started toward it. He felt so indifferent to Maxew that, when he heard him struggling along behind him, he was not triumphant.

  That distant gong seemed to be ringing the hours like a town clock. It called Tashar out of the woods; it compelled him over the obstacles and through unimaginable tangles; it blandished him with promises of food, shelter, sympathy, and admiration. That piercing, persistent sound revealed to him his loneliness: the loneliness of hours, of days, of years. No one had ever known
or loved him. No one had ever recognized his longing to belong, to know the truth, to do remarkable things, to be courageous. No one but Saugus.

  Perhaps the gong was Saugus, for only Saugus could call him so steadily, accurately, and clearly.

  It was shocking when he burst through the tangle and found himself under open sky—a sky that shimmered with hot light, a light that also blazed below, blinding him so he saw only faint shapes moving about, and a narrow tunnel of brightness, walled on both sides by shadow, with fire overhead. It was an extremely narrow, blindingly bright town, he thought, and staggered into the path of a rumbling wagon drawn by blurry, massive horses.

  “Hey!” yelled the driver, and the horses uttered grunts of annoyance as the driver pulled them short. Tashar staggered backwards, his water tins clanging and clattering, and sat on the scalding white stone. He shaded his eyes from the light.

  After a while, Maxew came out of the woods and stood beside him. “Huh,” said the air witch.

  Tashar peered between his fingers at the narrow town, built in a tunnel, with floors and ceilings of fire and walls of shadow. But he saw neither a town nor a tunnel, and instead saw a work camp set up along a stretch of road. He brushed his hand across the stone’s surface, so flat and smooth that he couldn’t feel the seams. He felt like he had voyaged very far and reached a place he had never been before. But it was just the Shimasal Road.

  “Sit there all day, if you like.” Maxew walked away.

  Tashar got to his feet with great effort and reluctance, and stumbled after him.

  “Hie! Hie! Hie!” a woman yelled, and Tashar stumbled out of the way so a team of oxen could haul a massive log past him, to where Tashar saw many such logs piled up, as if in the yard of a lumber mill. Nearby, people collected and stacked debris in stacks, tossing the branches up to people who stood atop the piles.

  Tashar followed Maxew northward to the camp that stretched up one side of the road. Neat piles of trade goods, covered by oiled canvas, acted as walls between which more canvas was stretched for shade. In the near distance, people were emptying a wagon of its goods while the driver shouted hoarsely at a sunburnt woman who faced him with her hands on her hips. Closer by, people chopped vegetables and tended huge stewpots. A healer’s flag flapped from a sunshade, where a man’s blistered hands were being anointed and wrapped. Maxew headed there.

  Tashar spotted a wagonload of water barrels, where people were filling their flasks. He began to run, stumbling, nearly falling, but was unable to make himself slow down. He wanted to open a spigot and let the water pour over his body until the barrel was empty. But he merely trickled water over his face and arms, smearing off the worst of the dirt, revealing the red welts and scratches all over his hands and forearms, some scabbed with dried blood and dirt, and some painfully inflamed.

  “How long have you been working the jam?” asked a sun-brown young woman who was filling a water jug nearby. “Looks like you’ve been in it for days.” She eyed his bruises and other injuries with admiration. If he weren’t too stupid with tiredness to make up a lie or even offer the truth, he could make a friend, or follow her to privacy and learn what farmers know of lovemaking. But all he could think of was his envy of her hat. “Yes,” he said.

  “How far south does it go?”

  He shrugged. “Is there food somewhere, do you know?”

  “A load of bread arrived from Shimasal a short while ago.” She pointed, and Tashar stumbled away.

  He got three loaves of bread and a fistful of dried meat, and no one demanded payment. Standing in the middle of the road, he ate an entire loaf. Then he wandered back to the healer’s tent, where he found Maxew flat on his back, with a rag-wrapped chunk of ice pressed to his face.

  “Is this your friend?” the healer asked Maxew.

  Maxew mumbled something.

  “Well, it must be.” She said to Tashar, “His nose is broken, but his eye is only bruised. I set the bone, and he needs to avoid vigorous movement for a few weeks.”

  “I see,” said Tashar.

  “You were in the storm, your friend said, with the trees falling around you. It’s a glad thing you weren’t killed.”

  Tashar had been angry, terrified, desperate, hopeless, and frustrated, but never glad. Even now, with his hunger and thirst satisfied, his face clean, and no need to struggle through that dreadful landscape ever again, he felt only offended and exhausted. “How is it you have ice?”

  “Oh, I brought some with me from the ice house in Shimasal. I figured there would be a lot of sprains. There have been broken bones also. People get hot or dazzled or tired, and then they fall. Not many cuts to stitch up, though. The people using axes know their business.”

  Tashar put a loaf of bread on Maxew’s chest, then lay down on the bare, smooth stones. The stones had been cut and laid by a G’deon—the work of a lifetime, it was said. He couldn’t remember which one had done it. The white granite was flecked with mica. The Light Road, it was sometimes called.

  The encampment awoke with the dawn. The healer distributed liniments to people and draft animals, and the injured people lined up for her to check and rebandage their injuries and tell them whether or not they could work today. Tashar and Maxew found a line of people waiting for porridge. The workers groaned, stretched sore muscles, and spoke longingly of cool drinks: juice, ale, and cider. Mostly they wanted ale.

  “Hey,” said a woman, as though she were talking to a couple of horses. “You two, you’re the ones that came through the woods yesterday?”

  It was the sunburned woman who had stood with her hands on her hips while a teamster’s horses and wagon were appropriated for the road-clearing. Tashar said, “Yes, madam, and we were astonished to find such a well-ordered project!”

  She immediately looked less like a cat getting ready for a fight and more like a cat whose chin is being rubbed. “Can you work?”

  “I’m pretty tired, but I’ll gladly do whatever I can. My friend has been hurt, though, and the healer doesn’t want him to work.”

  The woman examined Maxew with skepticism. “Today you two will drive the water cart. Tomorrow you’ll join a brush-gathering team, if you expect to continue to eat.”

  Maxew said, in his muffled nasal voice, which made him sound like he had a terrible cold, “How far is the road blocked?”

  “Well, if you’ve got a spyglass, you’re welcome to climb a pile and try to see the end. I just hope there are people on the far side, doing the same work we’re doing. And maybe it will get easier. The weather-wise people say the cyclone grew weaker as it went south.” She shut her mouth then, and Tashar thought she looked aggravated, as if she wouldn’t normally exchange three words with people who were stupid enough to get caught in the woods in a deadly windstorm.

  “I certainly hope so, madam,” said Tashar as she turned away.

  “Why don’t you lick her hand and wag your tail too?” Maxew said.

  “I gained us the right to eat breakfast!”

  “Yet you really are willing to drive the water wagon. But we’re going southward.”

  “With the road completely blocked?”

  “It won’t be worse than what we’ve endured already.”

  The old man serving the porridge plopped a heavy spoonful into Maxew’s porringer, and then another into Tashar’s. They stood in another line for cream. “We’ve got no supplies,” said Tashar.

  “Well, you get the water, bottom-man, and I’ll get the food.”

  “Why must you always jeer at me?”

  “What else should I do? You have no good qualities.”

  People handed Maxew everything he requested. Within an hour, laden with food, water, and tools, they once again faced the fallen trees, where several teams of sawyers were cutting the limbs from the trunks while a couple of people studied how to attach a chain and the oxen waited patiently. At a wagon with a
jury-rigged hoist, a bunch of people hauled on ropes, like sailors raising sail. Someone had made a joke, and they were laughing so hard that they could scarcely pull.

  Tashar wanted to go over and teach them a sailor’s song, to help them pull in rhythm. But Maxew had climbed over two trees already. Should Maxew be the only one whom Saugus congratulated on his adventure when it was Tashar who had sailed in the sky? He followed Maxew back into the tangle of fallen trees.

  Chapter 43

  The moon that Chaen had seen from time to time must have set hours ago. Starlight could not penetrate the leafy canopy. She and Seth walked in a crowd that was invisible.

  “How will I draw a picture of this march?” Chaen asked.

  “You couldn’t make it dark enough—not with all the ink in an ink-seller’s cart.”

  “But I want to draw the feeling.”

  “Surely that would be darker yet: death, fear, unimaginable weariness, haunting hopelessness . . .”

  “But the darkness moves. It is the bodies of our companions, each one trudging grimly forward. They keep me upright and walking, and I suppose I do the same for them. And I don’t even know their names. How can I draw that?”

  “I think you may be delirious,” said Seth.

  “Aren’t you?”

  “Maybe. I walk around and around my fears, snarling. I jump in and snap at them. Then I jump back.”

  “Like a dog with a snake.” Seth certainly was like a Basdown cow dog: sturdy, bossy, friendly, cheerful, growling or barking when necessary, but fundamentally civilized.

  Up ahead, one of the captains gave a call, and the soldiers who were trudging, grumbling, and staggering through the dark woodland voiced a reply. Ahead and then behind, the others repeated the cry. The Paladins shouted hoarsely, but in Shaftalese, “Water, sir!”

  Chaen checked her water flask and decided to refill it at the stream they were approaching. She and Seth bumped into the people who had stopped to unbuckle their boots and remove their socks. “Watch out,” said Emil at ground level. “Man down.”