Fire Logic el-1

by J. Marks Laurie

  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 midafternoon. 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 of 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 Mednc’s face. The seer’s lenses glowed with flame. “You areyoung,” 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, knowingly and willingly. 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.”

  “ Yourbooks.”

  “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.
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  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 Twenty

  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 rebandaging 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 followed 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 woke 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-encrusted. 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.

  Soon, they climbed down out of the mountains and followed a river to the northwest, and slept one night at a farmstead, in the hay. The farmers fed them even though they were respectively too injured, tired, and pregnant to work; they would not hear of a pregnant woman going hungry; and they nearly convinced her to sleep in a bed instead of the barn. Norina was not tireless, and when Zanja turned to look at her that night she caught her off guard, and just for a moment could see how worried she was. Then Norina turned her head, and her face was stone again.

  At midday, they entered a village at a crossroads, which Norina said was called Strongbridge. The bridge was indeed impressive, and was frequently crossed by heavy wagons. The inn-yard they entered served as a kind of depot where huge dray horses stood harnessed while the drivers paced the cobbles, stretching their stiff legs, eating the meat and bread hauled out to them in baskets, and swigging tankards of ale against the oppressive heat. The inn itself was of startling size, recently painted red and green, with flowers cascading over its roof from an enterprising vine. Among the flowers a raven stalked. In the rectangular gap of a second floor window a very tall woman was intricately folded, nearly invisible in shadow. She looked as though she might be trapped there.

  “Zanja,” Norina said sharply, to call her attention to the girl who waited for Zanja to hand her the reins.

  Zanja dismounted, and left horse and companions standing in the yard. She could not run yet on her injured leg, and the front door jerked open before she had reached it.

  She had half forgotten how big Karis was. She filled the doorway, her shoulders almost wide enough to touch both doorframes, head bowed to fit below the lintel, big hands clasping the timber frame as though she might simply collapse it, and make the inside out, and the outside m. And then it was as though the earth itself had clasped Zanja in a bruising embrace and lifted her half off her feet, and made as though to completely encompass and engulf her.

  Her ear was against Karis’s heart. She gripped her with all her strength. She would not let Karis go again. All the forces of the Universe might range themselves against her, but she would not let Karis go.

  “Just leave us alone, Nori,” Karis said after a while.

  A long time later, Zanja lifted her head a little, and realized that Karis had practically folded herself around her, and seemed not at all inclined to release her, though she did raise her cheek somewhat from the top of Zanja’s head when she felt her move. Zanja said, “I’m making a mess of your shirt.”

  “How would anyone know the difference?” But Karis produced a sweaty handkerchief from somewhere, and Zanja used it to wipe the remaining tears and dirt from her face. “We’re making spectacles of ourselves,” Karis said.

  Around the bulge of Karis’s bicep Zanja could see into the public room, where a couple of hardened drinkers stared at them. “Surely there’s a path by the river,” Zanja said.

  Zanja’s limp gave them as good a reason as any to walk arm in arm despite the sweltering heat. She felt dazed, in a strange land, with no familiar landmarks. Dear gods, she thought, what boundary didI just cross? As they walked through the town, Karis stopped to buy some steamed buns from a stall, which did a desultory business. The streets were largely deserted, dogs lay panting in what shade they could find, and every window was propped open. On a day like this, the entire population of Asha Valley could have been found in or near the river, and so it was here. The shady shoreline was crowded with lounging or dozing adults, and still more swam along the banks, keeping an eye on the shrieking children. They found a solitary place at last, where the current was probably too swift for swimming, and they sat side by side upon the damp earth. Damsel flies covered a branch over the water like jewels on a rich man’s jerkin. Karis gave Zanja a dumpling. Its meat filling was so spicy it made Zanja’s eyes tear up again.

  “Now stop th
at,” Karis said.

  “It’s really spicy. Gods know I’ll cry at anything lately, but this time it’s not sadness.”

  Karis took a bite, and closed her eyes in concentration, chewing. “I guess maybe I can taste something,” she said finally.

  “It’s like eating coals from a fire,” Zanja said.

  “Is that good? It certainly sounds interesting.”

  “In a painful kind of way.”

  Zanja had not quite remembered the utter chaos of Karis’s hair, which grew in every direction and was twisted into vinelike tendrils that looked impossible to comb or tame. She had not quite remembered the intense blue color of her eyes, or the fine lines that radiated out from them like the splines of a fan. She had remembered that Karis’s physical presence was a kind of a shock, like a stone tossed into water or a live voice penetrating a dream, but when they last met Zanja had been unable to truly feel the impact of it. Now, with every breath that lifted Karis’s shoulders, every pulse in her throat, Zanja felt her own heart turn over. When Karis turned to her, she did not know what to do. Should she confess? Should she look away?

  Karis said, “I’ve thought about you constantly.”

  Zanja opened her mouth, but didn’t trust whatever might have come out of it. “How is it possible that you can act like this without desiring me?” she might have said.

  Karis said, “Take off your pants.”

  Zanja felt a disorientation, then got a grip on herself and said with difficulty, “My leg is healing.”

  “Please, Zanja, I beg you. The trajectory of the pistol ball has torn up the muscles of your thigh. Even if it heals you’ll have scarring inside your leg, and the muscle won’t work right because of it, and I’ll never be at peace if I don’t fix it.”

  Zanja unbuttoned and pulled down her breeches and lay upon her side while Karis cut the bandage from her thigh. She would turn this experience into a test of discipline, for she seemed to be sorely in need of such an exercise. “Can you leave the scar?”