Fire Logic

by Laurie J. Marks

  “I think she’s half out of her mind,” he added, “And she certainly cannot recover here. I ask you to take her under your protection, and bring her to a healer.”

  Norina stood up. “I will, of course. But first, I think I’d better guarantee that the rogue lieutenant of yours can’t get his forces organized, or we may find it difficult to get safely out of South Hill. I’ll leave my man here, to give you the appearance of propriety. I don’t think any of your people have noticed that he’s deaf.” She picked up the bag from beside Zanja and gave her a handful of the dried fruit. “What became of your blades? You don’t know? All right, I’ll find them for you. Is there anything else you own that’s too precious to leave behind? All right, eat that. Come, raven.”

  The raven flew to her shoulder, and, gesturing to her man to remain, Norina walked over to the knot of people that had formed around Willis. The knot loosened as Willis’s people stood back to let him face the Truthken on his own. No doubt she would use her substantial powers and authority to make his present and future life as unpleasant as he deserved.

  Emil commented, “A formidable woman, even for a Truthken.” He took some folded papers from his doublet’s inside pocket. “My first letter from a seer. He devoted most of it to successfully convincing me to spare your life at any cost. As for the rest, he says he had a dream that the land would recognize him as her son, and so he’s going forth into Shaftal on his own. He wrote that he has left me all his books—had them shipped downriver to a storehouse in Haprin for me to pick up. I feel like I’ve been bequeathed a child by a total stranger.”

  Zanja said, “I wish you could have met him. You would have liked him.”

  “I admit I find his letter both intelligent and convincing. It’s a very strange sensation to be saying such things about a man who has helped to kill so many of my friends.”

  “But he was trapped. When the walls of the House of Lilterwess fell, the Sainnites themselves were buried in the rubble. And we all are buried there with them, crushed and suffocating under the stones.”

  “Hmm. Now you are talking treason. Good thing there’s no one but me to hear.” Emil unfolded his letter from Medric again, and Zanja saw how creased and smudged the paper was. This letter had forced Emil to subject it to uneasy and intense scrutiny, and perhaps its contents still were being delivered to him as he glanced at it once again, still seeming uncertain how to read it. “He wrote some glyphs here at the bottom, do you see? It seems like a message to you. At least, here is your Owl, your Raven, your Door.”

  In fact, Medric had written at the bottom of the page each of the glyphs from Zanja’s frantic card reading the day after Fire Night. But now, no madwoman lay at the center of the circle, holding together or being torn apart by contrary forces. Instead, there was a glyph Zanja did not know how to read. She touched it with her fingertip, and Emil said, “That’s Fellowship, the union of friends to serve a grand design. What do you think he means by it?”

  “I think he’s nineteen years old and hasn’t yet lost his hope.”

  “Zanja na’Tarwein,” Emil said, “May that hope one day be yours and mine as well.”

  When Norina returned, Willis walked behind her, carrying some of Zanja’s gear, including her missing blades. One of his people also followed, leading the horses like a servant. Truthkens must be obeyed, in small things and in large. Zanja hastily chewed and swallowed the dried fruit. It lay within her, warm as earth in summer. The wound in her leg stopped seeping blood, and when she stood up, her vision remained clear.

  Emil buckled her weapons belt onto her and put the knife into her boot sheath, and helped her mount one of Norina’s horses. She must have looked a ruin as she rode out of that place, tired unto death, with her breeches blood-crusted and her face marked and swollen from Willis’s fist. When she looked back, she saw Emil, standing serenely alone in the middle of the roadway. He lifted a hand in farewell. So long as he stood there, Zanja knew, no one would dare chase after them. He was still standing there when the road took a turn, and he was gone from sight.

  Part Three: The Hinge of History

  All love is made of insane hope.

  —Mackapee’s Principles for Community

  The past is always with us. For the blood that soaks the earth cries out for justice. And without justice we never will have peace.

  —Mabin’s Warfare

  Between victory and defeat, between offense and revenge, lies a third possibility: neither a compromise nor an abandonment, but a marriage.

  —Medric’s History of My Father’s People

  Chapter 19

  Like a great wheel the year turned; and now the sower dropped to the horizon, and up rose the gatherer with her arm outstretched to capture the ripe stars and put them in her basket. All day, in kitchens across Shaftal, the ripe fruits had been cut up to be dried in the sun, or cooked with sugar to make preserves, or covered with hot syrup to be baked into pies during the dark half of the year.

  Now it was night, and in the most northwestern borderland, the general of the Paladins sat awake in her lamplit study with a bowl of golden apricots untouched upon her desk. The aging general of the Sainnites also sat awake, drinking wine and pacing restlessly as he made the messenger from South Hill explain again and again how the South Hill garrison had managed to lose track of the Sainnites’ only seer.

  Somewhere between these two generals, in a silent glade well away from the road, Zanja lay staring into the darkness, and did not flinch or even seem to notice when Norina began to peel the bandage from her wounded leg. And on the river which runs east past Wilton, Emil stood at the bow of a boat that lazily rode the current towards Hanishport and the sea. After fifteen years as the Commander of South Hill Company, he had left South Hill, and never would return.

  How could he continue to command, when his general had proven herself such a fool? Norina Truthken had told him quite forcefully that Mabin had valid reasons for her actions that would never be explained. But whatever Mabin’s reasons, no matter how valid they might be, that did not make it any less impossible for Emil to continue as commander. He wrote Mabin a letter, he delivered South Hill Company to Perry’s capable command, he bid his friends farewell, and he left South Hill.

  His lifetime of service had left him impoverished by Shaftali standards, for he had no family to go home to, and the friends who had served as family in the old Paladins were dead or fighting in the war. Still, he could not seem to bring himself to be concerned about his own future. He felt only his freedom.

  The boat reached Haprin at mid-afternoon. He made his way to a storehouse near the docks, where he showed a woman his letter from Medric and she waved him into the building without even looking at it. “It’s four big trunks, halfway back on the right side,” she said. “You’ll be needing a wagon.”

  Once beyond the light of the doorway, he walked through a darkness that rustled with mice and bats. He hoped that the trunks were good ones and he would not find the books chewed to pieces. Halfway down the long, dark building, a sudden light flared as though someone had lit a match. The flare became a lamp wick’s steady glow, and the flame disappeared, though Emil could track it by the light it cast. In his recurring dream, he had followed that glow of light through shadows just like these. He remembered these half-seen crates, the dusty, dim shadows, the rustling of the mice. His heart’s desire waited for him here.

  The crowded shapes would form an open space here, which would be filled with light. And so he found a glowing nest of blankets tucked among the massive trunks. The man from Emil’s dream sat quietly beside a small brass lamp, which did not illuminate his face. Upon his knees lay a plain, flat wooden box with a broken latch that once had locked with a key. The man said nothing, but held the box up to Emil.

  Emil knelt and took the box. He opened the hinged lid, and laid the box down upon the floor so that
the lamplight shone inside. The papers carefully preserved within were padded with small pillows of down and silk. On the top page was written, “Principles for Community,” and underneath, scarcely readable in faded ink, the name “Mackapee.”

  Emil did not touch the fragile paper, but he bent his face close to it, and breathed deeply. He could smell, so faint it scarcely was there at all, the scent of peat smoke. The Mackapee manuscript had not been burned after all.

  He saw that his life had been a spiral, first veering away from loss, but now turning back to a new beginning. He had done his duty. Now, at last, he could follow his heart.

  “You can only be Medric,” he said.

  “Sir, can you return this manuscript to its rightful place?”

  “It belongs at the library at Kisha, which has been destroyed.” Emil carefully closed the lid of the manuscript box. “I’ll have to build a new library, and a new university. And first, I’ll have to make Shaftal a place in which libraries and universities can be built.”

  The young man said, “That’s not a bad idea.”

  “It’s an undertaking so large I doubt anyone alive now will live to see the end it.”

  “Oh, no, I think you’re wrong. But in any case, ‘What’s worth doing is worth merely beginning.’”

  “So wrote Mackapee, the first G’deon of Shaftal. Have you read the manuscript?”

  “The manuscript? No, sir, it has not been removed from its box. I’ve studied a printed copy.”

  Emil took up the little traveling lamp by the handle, and lifted it so it illuminated Medric’s face. The seer’s lenses glowed with flame. “You are young,” Emil said.

  “I suppose. You’re exactly as I dreamed.”

  “You dreamed of me? What did you dream?”

  Medric’s gesture took in the dark warehouse, the glowing lamp, the fortress of books. Emil set down the lamp rather sharply, and sat back on his heels. When two fire bloods share a dream, it is said, their fates are linked forever.

  Medric peered at him. “Are you all right, sir?”

  “You’ll help me build that library.”

  “You’ll accept my help?”

  “Why wouldn’t I? Oh.” Emil began to laugh. “That’s right; you’re the enemy.”

  It seemed to also strike Medric as terribly funny, and his hilarity didn’t run dry until his spectacles fell off and he had to retrieve them by feel.

  Emil said, “A few days after Fire Night, when Zanja was on her way to meet you—though I didn’t know it then—she said she was trapped in the past and needed to cross over into the future. I foolishly asked her to take me with her. So here I am, bewildered mainly by my lack of regret.”

  Medric smiled. “I crossed over also, knowing and willing. But what became of her?”

  “I managed to get her safely out of South Hill. That’s all I know. But let me thank you now, while I’m thinking of it, for your letter. It helped me to do what was right, and I needed that help desperately.”

  “Well, I’m glad I’ve done some good for once.”

  “Have you eaten? May I buy your supper?”

  Medric gathered himself up and rose to his feet. “I confess, I haven’t eaten in a day or two, and not because I’m fasting for a vision.”

  “You’re penniless, of course, which is why you’re sleeping with your books.”

  “Your books.”

  “My books, if you insist. Yet it seems that you accompany them.”

  “Sir, the books are not a bribe. Ever since I began to collect them, I knew that I would have to deliver them to a proper caretaker. I simply could not bear to leave them unguarded.” Medric offered his hand to help Emil rise.

  Emil took Medric’s hand and let himself be helped. Medric was slightly built and had a soft hand, but he was not without muscle. Only a fool would underestimate him: no accident had brought them to this place, but the active, determined intervention of a gifted seer. His air of uncertainty was merely an affectation.

  Emil said, still holding his hand, “My name is Emil. If you call me ‘sir’ again, I’ll start calling you ‘Master Seer’.”

  Medric looked appalled. “Please don’t, Emil.”

  “Let’s get some food in you.”

  Emil could not bear to leave the manuscript unattended, so they took it with them. At the inn, Medric asked for bread and vegetables, causing the cook to look at him askance, but Emil accepted roast capon and a pie of fresh peaches. Over food, their conversation turned from somber to hilarious, and Emil laughed until his ribs hurt, wondering if that lightness in his chest could possibly be his heart. If it was his heart, it was on holiday.

  After supper, he purchased a wagon and a sturdy dray horse, using almost all the money he had taken with him. Haprin had a ferry that would take him across the river; from there he would go to the western border where he could store the books with his friend the shepherd. After that, well, he supposed some plan would come to him.

  It was nearly dark when they returned to the storehouse. Medric showed Emil the other rare books in his collection. He had found them one by one through dreams, he said, stored at the bottom of one or another soldier’s footlocker. He had collected a couple of hundred books by the time he finally got the one he was looking for, The Way of the Seer, and each book had its own adventure story of unlikely survival in a hostile world. They talked about the books until the lamp oil ran out and left them sitting shoulder to shoulder in a sudden darkness.

  Medric said, “Sometimes this summer I have envisioned myself in another place: a stone cottage in a lonely land, with sleet tapping on the shutters and a warm fire burning. And I’m not alone there. I ask a question, and you come and sit down next to me. You tell me how the past became the present. You get a book down from the shelf and read it to me.”

  Emil said, “It’s still a long time before sleet taps on the shutters, but tomorrow is close by. I hope you’ll be traveling with me.”

  “I will,” Medric said. “Don’t go.”

  Emil could feel Medric’s warm breath stirring the air between them. He found Medric’s face by feel and carefully took off his spectacles and put them safely atop the trunk. Then, in a bed that was made of as much book as blanket, he made love to a son of the enemy. It occurred to him later that even his oldest and most loyal friends would not forgive him this transgression, or even worse, they’d misunderstand and pity him. He lay in the rustling darkness of the warehouse with Medric asleep in his arms, and could not bring himself to care what anyone thought of him. He had broken with the past, and the future was a book he could hardly wait to read.

  Chapter 20

  After a day or two of travel, Zanja stopped expecting the upbraiding she deserved. In fact, Norina accorded Zanja a certain kindness, though from outside it might have looked more like indifference. She had looked after Zanja’s injuries, patiently soaking loose the bandage from the wound, and re-bandaging it every day after that with an expertise that she must have acquired from J’han. She insisted that Zanja rest even though she could not sleep, and hounded her into eating. She and the man took turns riding, while Zanja rode all the time, and she would not permit Zanja to do any of the work at all, except small things she could do while sitting down. It was easier to acquiesce to her iron will than it was to resist, and so, in spite of the circumstances, Zanja’s injuries began to heal.

  Other than insisting brusquely that Zanja obey her, Norina left her alone. Zanja rode blindly behind her companions, carried forward only by the momentum of the journey. She did not know where she was, or in what direction she traveled. She did not care that she lived, and took no interest in what might happen to her next. Days passed, and she did not even speak. She wept without noticing her own tears.

  One morning, she raised her head and noted that they were traveling northward. They fol
lowed a rutted, unmarked track through rugged, mountainous country. Some time passed, and she looked down and noticed Norina walking at her stirrup, breathless, putting a hand occasionally to the horse’s side for balance. “You’ll miscarry,” Zanja said.

  “I’m as likely to miscarry as you are to die from sepsis,” Norina said.

  Some time later, Zanja said, “I feel I could die from sorrow first.”

  But Norina said, quite sensibly and with surprising kindness, “You’ll start feeling better soon. The first year is over.”

  A long time later, Zanja asked, “Will Willis get control of South Hill Company?”

  Norina laughed. “That man? Not even in his dreams.”

  That night, Zanja plunged into a deep and restful sleep, from which she wok as if rousing from a summer fever. She bathed in a cold stream, washed and mended her shirt, and took out her blades to check and clean them. The small knife in her boot was blood-crusted. She fingered the scab on her neck, remembering what she had done, amazed that her crazed logic had brought aid after all.

  “The raven is gone?” she asked Norina, as they ate camp porridge by the fire. The man at arms was already saddling the horses.

  “Naturally, I sent him with a message to Karis that you are all right.”

  “I want to send Karis an apology. I must have startled her when I wrote that message on the knife blade.”

  Norina ate a few mouthfuls of her porridge before commenting, rather wryly, “I have to say, your methods are ingenious.”

  One night they were kindly welcomed and generously fed in a woodcutter’s camp, where the people were desperate for news and stories of any kind at all. Zanja lay gazing at the stars, which had not been so close since she left the mountains of her people.