Fire Logic el-1

by J. Marks Laurie

  J’han smiled sadly. “I have every intention of doing that.”

  “Without Norina?”

  “Norina chooses differently from how I choose. And as you know, she is uncompromising. So this is how it ends.”

  Later, having situated the horses and made suitable arrangements with the farmers for lodging, Zanja sat with Norina in the guest room and told her how Mabin had tried and failed to kill Karis. Norina listened in unnerving silence. She asked no questions, neither did she argue. For a while she lay upon the rope bed, then she got up to pace the room, then she sat down and picked the dried mud from her boots. When Zanja had finished, Norina went to the window and leaned out to shout for J’han to come inside.

  “Have you ever heard of someone using less smoke?” she asked him when he came in, wiping his hands on a towel.

  “Less than what?” he asked blankly.

  “Karis was forced to smoke more frequently than her usual amount, much more. Enough to nearly kill her. And now she’s decreasing that frequency, trying to reduce herself back down to once a day. Have you ever heard of such a thing?”

  “No,” he said in some astonishment. “Is she being successful?”

  “Yes, apparently, though it hasn’t been easy.”

  “I always have heard the smoke users inevitably increase the amount they smoke, until they die of the poison or else from their inability to buy as much drug as they need. If it’s possible for them to use less…” He paused, shaken and distressed. “Then we have abandoned them to a fate that we always assumed to be inevitable, when in fact we should have been trying to help them.”

  “Karis is different,” Norina said.

  “She is an extraordinary person of great wit and will. But she is human, and her body is no different from mine or yours.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Norina snapped.

  J’han set his lips and visibly restrained himself from a sharp reply.

  “What is wrong with you?” Zanja said to Norina later, after she had sent J’han away again. “I can hardly endure your company, and I don’t see how bringing you to Karis will do her a service.”

  “Watch your words, Zanja na’Tarwein. I’m not in a tolerant mood.”

  “I would never expect you to be tolerant.”

  Norina sat again on the bed and dug her fingers into her short hair, which was stiff with dirt and stood upright like wheat stalks. “Go away.”

  After a long silence she looked at Zanja, who had remained sitting where she was, at the table by the window. Norina said, “You tell me that Karis’s true enemy is my commander and a hero of the people, and that somehow I, a Truthken, never noticed. You tell me that when my dearest friend needed me the most desperately, she nearly died in my absence. And now you imply that you have the ability and the right to keep me from her unless I behave myself according to your high standards. Your very presence chides me. Go away and chide someone else.”

  Zanja left her, and found J’han out in the kitchen, examining a collection of dirty and impatient children, who clearly wanted to make the best of the remaining daylight and saw no reason to be subjected to a healer’s scrutiny. J’han sent them away, reassured the gathered parents about their health, and took Zanja by the arm out into the privacy of the yard. They sat upon the edge of the well, and for some time neither of them said a word.

  “The people of air are not easy to love,” Zanja said at last.

  “Nor even to like sometimes,” J’han said.

  “Would you at least come and have a look at Karis, before you start your own journey? I’m weary with caring for her.”

  “Yes, of course. My child’s in good hands, and I am afraid Norina will kill herself with this hard traveling. It was not an easy birth.”

  Zanja sighed. “I was beginning to see how being friends with a Truthken might be invigorating enough that I could put up with the exasperation. But now I can’t see it anymore.”

  J’han laughed heartily, without anger for once.

  “And I fear for Karis, should she be trapped between air and fire. In truth, I wouldn’t blame her if she decided to get rid of us both, just so she could have some peace.”

  They talked until after dark, when one of the farmers called them in to supper. Norina did not appear at the supper table, and J’han slept out in the barn with Zanja. In the morning, their journey north began, an angry journey made even more grim by the weather, which turned wet and stormy only after they had traveled beyond the reaches of civilization and there was no shelter to be found. By the time they reached the canyon path they all had been wet to the skin for two days and nights, and the nights had been cold as well as wet. They had been sleeping huddled together for warmth, but relations between them had not thawed much.

  In all, thirteen days had passed since Zanja had last traversed this rocky pathway down to the lake. Then the lake had glowed like a jewel; now it was gray, with the muted colors of tree and canyon bleeding across it like ink on a wet page. Halfway down the path, Zanja spotted Emil riding up to meet them. He also rode on horseback, with his horse muddied to the belly and rain dripping from its mane, and he looked as wearied and worried as Zanja ever had seen him. Before he even spoke she knew that something terrible had happened.

  “Karis has disappeared again,” he said. “Five days we’ve been hunting for her, and haven’t seen a trace, not even a footprint. Zanja, listen—before you ride off in a panic and kill yourself on the slippery stones—I swear to you that she was not taken away. She has written a glyph upon the space of her cave, and the message, I think, is intended for you.”

  In the cave shelter, the water clock was not merely shattered, but pulverized to powder. In the middle of the cave floor lay Karis’s box of smoke, with the lid broken to splinters, and the interior burnt to charcoal. Of the contents, the half year’s supply of smoke, nothing remained but ashes.

  Yes, Zanja could easily read this glyph. She dropped to her knees beside the incinerated box. Of course Karis could not imagine herself free from Mabin’s control and Nonna’s expectations if she could not also imagine herself free of smoke. Nearly a month of battling back the smoke must have given her an insane hope that she might be able to defeat it for good. That was the doorway she had decided to enter, the doorway where certain death lurked.

  And then Norina was shouting at her: “What have you done! What did you do to her!” And it did not even occur to Zanja until too late that she had to defend herself, and Norina’s heavy boot slammed into her side—once, twice, a third time—before Zanja had managed to catch Norina’s foot and take her down. And then they were rolling, their blades of folded steel ringing like bells, a sweet, terrible sound. But no matter where Karis was, at the very moment that Zanja’s blade cut into Norina’s flesh, Karis would know.

  Zanja flung her dagger away and blocked with her forearm a stroke that could have killed her, and felt the dagger slice through cloth and flesh and all the way to bone. She brought her knee up reflexively into Norina’s crotch and heard her shout, and then she was rolling away and rising to her feet, but Norina’s heavy boot cracked into her knee and Zanja heard, rather than felt, the bone shatter like pottery. Then Emil took Norina from behind and the fight seemed to be over. And then the pain came.

  “Hold still,” J’han said, his voice deadly calm.

  “Gods burn her to ashes—”

  “Zanja, hold still. Your ribs might be broken and you could be killed yet.”

  Zanja had seen the kind of death that came when a rib pierced a lung, and she held herself still, or as still as she could. A very bad time followed. There was much frantic activity around her, and sometimes J’han’s voice penetrated the haze of pain, always calm, measured, talking steadily to her or to someone else: “I know it’s bad, Zanja, but there’s no time to brew a potion. Just keep breathing—you know how to keep the pain from taking control of you—Now, sir, give me the bandages, and that grayish bottle—yes, that one. Put more pressur
e on her arm; it’s starting to leak again …” He faded out, and when he came back he was working with needle and thread like a seamster—nice of him to mend Zanja’s shirt—except that it was her arm he was mending—and she couldn’t take a deep breath for some reason. “You’re awake again?” he said. “Almost done now. Amazing how easy it is to do this kind of damage and how much work it takes to fix. You can’t breathe very well because I’ve got your ribs bound, but they’re just cracked.”

  “What happened to my leg?” she croaked. Her entire leg seemed to be immobilized with a splint of some kind, but the pain was dazzling and nauseating.

  “It’s not good at all—sir, can you cut that?—Your kneecap’s shattered so badly I don’t know if it can mend. At the very least it’ll be a long time before you can move about at all, even on crutches. I’ve got it in a splint, but—”

  Zanja shut her eyes to understand him better, but the information seemed beyond comprehension. All she could think of was Karis, incinerating her entire smoke supply and walking away. How long would it take for her to die? Would Zanja feel it, when Karis died?

  “What happened to Norina?” she asked.

  “She went away,” J’han said distractedly.

  Zanja glanced sideways and saw Emil, holding Zanja’s arm still so that J’han could work on it, watching J’han’s work with professional interest. There was blood everywhere. Feeling Zanja’s attention, Emil raised an eyebrow and said mildly, “Now that was the dirtiest fight I’ve seen outside of a tavern. Too bad you were at the receiving end.”

  Zanja gasped, “I’d hurt Karis if I hurt Norina.”

  “Unfortunately, Norina had no such compunctions. But this is an amazingly clean wound.”

  J’han said, “With the right blow, a blade like that could kill you before you knew you were hurt. I wish my surgeon’s knives were that sharp.”

  “Where’s Medric?” Zanja said.

  “Now you’re starting to think,” Emil said. “Karis seems to have convinced Medric to keep his mouth shut. He’s refused to help look for Karis, as have the Lake People refused. It’s been just me and Annis, chasing around the countryside like a couple of wastrels. I even tried your trick with the directional glyphs, but it doesn’t work for me.”

  “Hold still!” J’han said.

  “Gods’ curses on that madwoman,” Zanja gasped as a fresh wave of pain washed through her. “I’m the only one who can find her!”

  “You’ll have to accept that you’re not going anywhere,” J’han said.

  Annis brought over a steaming bowl of dark, stinking fluid and held it out for J’han’s inspection. He dipped in a fingertip and tasted it, and made a face. “Practically undrinkable. That’s about right.”

  “No one’s been able to find Medric either,” Annis said. “He’s around, but no matter where you are, he’s just left moments before.”

  Medric said at the doorway of the cave, “I’m here now. Good gods.” He looked around the blood-smeared cave.

  “You didn’t dream this part?” Emil said bitterly.

  Pale, red-eyed with sleeplessness or sorrow, Medric dropped to one knee beside Zanja. “Karis promised to make it possible to find her. She said she’d go west along the canyon rim as far as she could go in five days travel, and then she’d hole up in some hollow place where she could see the sky. She asked me to beg your pardon, Zanja, for deceiving you, but she had to fight this battle alone.”

  “She brought enough smoke to last until today?”

  “Yes.”

  “All three of you must go find her, then. If she can be saved—”

  J’han said, with that terrible honesty that was sometimes the only gift a healer could give, “Zanja, there is no hope of that. Even if we can find her before she dies, the only thing that could save her is smoke, and we have none.“

  Emil said in a low voice, “Mabin has some.”

  There was silence. Zanja said, “Karis would rather die.” She made the mistake of moving, and for some time she could do nothing but breathe and struggle to stay conscious. When J’han put the bowl to her mouth she drank just a swallow of the bitter pain killer. “J’han, Karis is vested with the power of Shaftal,” she said.

  He sat back sharply, nearly spilling the bowl of potion. “What!”

  “Go with them to find her. If she is dying, at least she should die with dignity.”

  “Annis can take care of Zanja,” Emil said.

  Annis grumbled because her long recess with the Otter People had come to an end, but she did not refuse her old commander’s will. They settled Zanja onto the pallet with the potion beside her, and within the time it would have taken ten drops of water to fall from the water clock, they were gone.

  Zanja took one more swallow of the bitter potion, and told Annis to leave her alone. After that came a merciful darkness and stillness.

  As she slept, Zanja dreamed that she was an owl, flying across the face of the earth, with the river flowing to her right, black as blood, and rocks below, like scattered bones. At last, she found Karis, a broken and twisted body in a grassy hollow where sharp stones broke through the earth like teeth. Her body was cold; no breath passed her lips. Emil, Medric, J’han, and Norina knelt in a circle around her, digging with their bare hands to cover her with earth. Norina was weeping, racked with a grief made all the more terrible by the bitter strength her sorrow had overcome.

  Zanja must have cried something in her sleep, for she opened her eyes to find Annis beside her, with a cool hand upon her burning forehead. Zanja’s throat felt scoured raw, and her voice came out a whisper. “They will find her too late. Is there any word?”

  “Zanja, it’s much too soon.”

  “But someone is here.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I feel it.”

  “Maybe the potion is giving you hallucinations.” But Annis went to the doorway, where Zanja could see a bit of star-scattered sky above, and a bit of star-scattered lake below. “I don’t see anything,” Annis said. Then her body gave a jerk and she uttered a surprised grunt and lifted a hand as if to investigate what had struck her, but before she could understand what had happened, she fell.

  It happened so suddenly that the sound of the pistol’s report didn’t register until after Annis’s knees buckled. There was nowhere for Zanja to go, even if she’d had the ability and will to flee. Her blade lay within reach, but thanks to Norina her blade hand was useless. Her pistols were still in Homely’s saddlebags, and the three men had taken Homely with them. Five people came into the cave and made certain that Zanja was indeed helpless, and then Mabin came in. “Where is Karis?”

  “Karis has returned to earth.”

  Mabin struck her across the face. “The truth!”

  Zanja tasted blood. She said thickly, “Karis has delivered herself to the smoke.”

  Mabin sat back on her heels, rigid with frustration. “She makes no sense.”

  “There’s no one else here,” one of her companions said. “We’ve searched all along the beach. No horses, no equipment, no nothing. Just the two of them, and Annis is dead.”

  Mabin hissed in her breath, and then released it. “If I’d known it was Annis—well, there’s no help for it now. So long as we’ve got this one, we’ve as good as got the one I want. We’ll have to settle for that.”

  “This one seems to be newly injured. Broken ribs, it looks like, and—” Zanja felt her injured arm lifted and examined. “She was cut defending herself, with healer’s stitches closing up the wound. A nice, clean job of it.”

  “A healer, and someone with a nasty temper—that would be Norina and her consort. No doubt there’s been a disagreement and Norina has taken off with Karis.” Mabin fell silent a moment, and then she muttered, “Shaftal, what have I done to deserve this?”

  Zanja was tired to the bone, and tired to the heart. She shut her eyes and did not open them again until her captors lifted her onto the litter they had made for her, and the pain began agai
n. The Paladins had to step over Annis’s body as they carried Zanja out into the cold night. And Karis—Karis also would soon be dead.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Emil, Medric, and J’han traveled through the afternoon and across the dark span of the night as though demons were after them. “I think we’re close now,” Medric said, sometime after dawn. Soon afterwards, they spotted the white flag lying limp in the half light: Karis’s shirt, they realized when they had drawn near, tied to a tree branch by the sleeves. They untied it and soon had found their way into a hollow of earth that was cupped like the palm of a giant hand. There in the center Karis lay in the wet grass. Norina, whose long intimacy with Karis must have helped her to find her first, lay beside her, embracing her naked body with her own.

  “She’s too cold,” she said.

  Emil lay down on Karis’s other side and they sandwiched her between them. After J’han had listened to Karis’s heart, he covered her with blankets, and sat upon a stone with his head in his hands, as though he could not bring himself to speak. The Truthken, though, began to weep. Having emptied herself of anger, Emil thought, now only grief remained. She had indeed loved Karis, however badly she might have done it.

  Emil held Karis tightly, as though to keep her from falling. Her powerful muscles lay limp and cold; her heartbeat was intangible, the motion of her breath so weak it seemed illusory. She’d bitten her mouth, battered her hands, scraped her skin raw upon the stones, in a terrible, solitary agony that had mercifully ended now. She would die without ever opening her eyes again. The healer did not have to say it out loud.

  Norina sat up. Her hair was plastered down with water and mud, her face pale with exhaustion beneath the grime of hard travel. “J’han, what can we do?”

  “Only smoke could save her,” J’han said.

  The Truthken shuddered, as though she’d been cut with a blade. “I have some smoke,” she said. “Ten years I’ve carried it with me, as a surety.”