Earth Logic el-2

by J. Laurie Marks

  The gray man said, “Ah, Medric, my dear, once again you were right.”

  “Emil,” said Medric reprovingly, “I’m always right.”

  “Right about what?” asked J’han, his fingers still pressed to the pulse in Emil’s wrist.

  “About Garland. Medric dreamed him into our kitchen.”

  All eight loaves of bread were eaten, and Garland also cooked two more pans of sausage before the cold-sharpened appetites were satisfied. Karis, carrying a sausage that was wrapped in a thick slice of bread, had gone down the mountain again, this time to fetch grain and hay from a distant farm for the exhausted draft horses. By the time she returned, the three drivers had fallen asleep by the parlor fire. Leeba had awakened to sit in Emil’s lap for a while, as he recounted the highlights of their journey. Then she had played with Medric, a game that seemed to have no clear rules and involved a great deal of running around. Garland had started more bread dough and a pot of beans, and was rolling out the crust for a meat pie when Karis finally came in. Ice shattered from her jerkin as she pulled it off to hang near the hearth. Her moth-eaten gloves must have dissolved, for her unprotected hands were white with cold. Garland gave her a cup of hot tea to hold.

  No one spoke. Norina and J’han appeared from the bedroom where they had been unpacking a crate, but Norina leaned on the door frame and did not come into the kitchen. Emil rested in a twig chair brought in from the parlor, his face pale with exhaustion, though he had turned down Garland’s offer of his own bed. All of them had been waiting for Karis, but now that she was here no one spoke. After she had drunk her tea, Garland gave her the half loaf of bread and the sausages that he had hidden away for her, and she uttered a sigh of gratitude. Garland said, “You’ve done three days’ work this morning, and no doubt you’ll spend the afternoon making chairs and beds.” For these travelers, despite their extraordinary quantity of baggage, had not transported a stick of furniture with them. Karis said, “Well, carpentry is easy work. Wood is so willing.” Garland pulled up a stool to the table, and gave her the butter and the butter knife.

  She sat down and buttered her bread with intense concentration as everyone, even Norina, lounging in the doorway, watched her. Garland had given Leeba some pastry dough and the rolling pin and it appeared that her poor lizard was becoming a lizard pie.

  “But there’s other work,” Karis said, mouth full. “Like healing Emil’s—” she glanced inquiringly at J’han.

  “Heart,” he said.

  Emil said, “I do not ask for healing. What I need is your forgiveness.”

  Karis set down her bread. “You’ll accept both,” she said, “or you’ll get neither.”

  Emil said flatly, “Karis, I don’t forgive myself.”

  With the small knife that usually dangled, along with a number of other small tools, from her belt, Karis had speared a sausage. But she eyed the sausage without interest, put it back on her plate, then stood up and went to Emil, and, with an abrupt, heavy movement knelt at his feet.

  He looked at her blankly. She lowered her head to rest on his knee. His hand lifted as of its own will, to stroke the wild tangle of her hair. She said, her voice muffled, “Did Zanja think I wanted her dead? Because I did not stop her?”

  Norina said from the doorway, “What did you hope she would think?”

  Karis raised her head. “That I was trying to be worthy, maybe.”

  She sat back on her heels. Garland could see only the back of Karis’s head, her exceptionally square shoulders, her arms at her sides with her hands apparently resting on her thighs. But whatever Emil saw in her face brought the life back into his. “You let her go?” he said, amazed. “Karis? You let hergo?”

  “Not very gracefully.” Norina’s tone was cool, but when Karis glanced at her, Garland thought he understood a little of how rare and difficult—and satisfying—it might be to win a Truthken’s approval.

  “You knew?” cried Medric at Norina, outraged. “You let us think Karis was angry? And you knew all along that she was—”

  “—merely devastated,” Norina said.

  Karis said quietly, “You know I loved her. And I let her die. What kind of person would do that?”

  Garland, attempting to fill the pie crust with meat and vegetables without looking at his hands, saw a quiet descend on all of them.

  “A remarkable person might,” Emil answered Karis finally. “A G’deon might.” He brought his hands up and began undoing the polished horn buttons of his heavy shirt. “Let me serve you a little longer, Karis.”

  She said harshly, “How much longer do you think you can endure it?”

  “As long as it’s interesting,” suggested Medric.

  “As long as Shaftal requires it,” said J’han.

  “As long as youcan endure it,” Emil said to Karis, smiling now.

  “A very long time then,” said Norina dryly. They all looked at her, and she added, “Well, look at the evidence! She can endure anything, for any length of time.”

  Emil’s unbuttoned shirt revealed that he had experienced his share of violence, and that he was fortunate for the armor of his ribs, which had turned aside more than one Sainnite saber. Karis put her hand to his scarred chest. Leeba, apparently not as oblivious as she had seemed, abandoned her rolling pin to run to Emil and lean on his knee. “Is your heart broken? Does it hurt?”

  He put an arm around her. “Yes, dear one.”

  “Karis will fix it,” she declared.

  “It’s fixed,” said Karis, sitting back.

  “Our child is growing up in some very strange circumstances,” said j’han worriedly.

  Karis got heavily to her feet, and scooped Leeba up. “Are we having lizard pie for supper? That’s a very raredish, isn’t it, Garland?”

  “Extremely,” he said. “Fortunately, for those of us who haven’t acquired a taste for lizard we have a more commonplace sort of pie also. But you,” he added, “should eat your breakfast, or you’ll never get any pie.”

  “He’s very bossy, don’t you think?” said Karis to Leeba. But she set her giggling daughter down, and made quick work of the bread and sausage that she had before been unable to eat. Now maybe she finally would be able to gain some weight, Garland thought. As he was putting his meat pie in the oven and helping Leeba to put her lizard pie in as well—into the other oven, which was not very hot— it occurred to him that the most important people in Shaftal were gathered here in his kitchen.

  He turned around and looked at them: sturdy J’han, who had brought Norina a cup of tea and was leaning companionably against the opposite doorjamb as she sipped it; Medric, who had somehow gotten into the chair with Emil, done up his buttons for him, and kissed him a couple of times with unrestrained affection; Karis, uncombed and unkempt, looking a bit unhappy that she had eaten all there was to eat, glancing up now at the two unlikely couples with the stunned sorrow of the newly widowed.

  “How about an apple or two,” Garland suggested.

  She looked at him, and he feared she might complain again about his pushiness. “Two,” she said.

  When he came out of the store room shining the apples on his apron. She said, “Well, now you have an idea of what you’ve gotten yourself into.”

  “I’ve gotten myself into a kitchen,” he said, endeavoring to sound as if the rest of it was of no importance to him.

  The Truthken in the doorway uttered a snort. Startled, he looked at her—he had almost forgotten her intimidating presence. Had he said an untruth? Perhaps he had.

  Medric said, “What did you think of the book, Karis? The Encyclopedia of Livestock!”He was grinning like a madman.

  “It was Zanja who found it, wasn’t it?”

  “She didn’t exactly know what she had found.”

  Karis bit into an apple and held it in her teeth so her hand was free to take the little book out of her vest. She handed it to Medric, took the apple out of her mouth, and said with her mouth full, “There’s an old man in it, with a basket
full of cabbages.”

  “Oh, now at last I’ll dream of him!” Medric began leafing eagerly through the book.

  “I found it,” Leeba said belatedly. “The baby book—I found it inside the big one.”

  Emil had looked puzzled, but only for a moment. With one finger he stopped Medric’s enthusiastic page turning. “Mabin,” he said, and read for a while. Then, he uttered a sharp laugh. He looked up and explained to Norina, “Harald wrote it. To Karis.”

  “Ah,” she said. “A misunderstood man attempts to explain himself to his greatest victim. I always wondered why he hadn’t.”

  Karis said, “Victim?”

  “Things do change quickly,” said Norina. “Sometimes it’s difficult to keep track of what’s actually true. Karis, I know something that will surprise you.”

  Karis sat down on the stool, with an apple in each hand, and looked at her. The men in the chair looked up simultaneously from reading, like startled birds.

  Norina said, “Zanja na’Tarwein isn’t actually dead.”

  There was a shocked silence.

  “Physically—” began Emil.

  “Metaphorically—” Medric started.

  They both fell silent as Karis said in her hoarse, hushed voice, “Nori, what did you do?”

  “There were some deceptions,” the Truthken said.

  Medric shut the little book. “Gods of bloody hell!”

  Emil said in a shocked voice, “With my own hand … !”

  “I sawher die!” said Medric.

  “Fire logic,” said Norina dismissively.

  Obviously untroubled by the outraged chorus, she gazed steadily at Karis. Karis said in her strained, raw voice, “You are the most underhanded, disagreeable, uncanny, hard-hearted person in the world.”

  “Do you know this for a fact?” said Norina curiously.

  “You might be loyal, also,” said Karis grudgingly.

  “These idiotic fire bloods, theyknow I’m sworn to serve you. You only—not their insane visions.”

  “I take offense!”

  Norina glanced at Medric, and he lapsed into a restless muttering that struck Garland as a kind of playacting. The odd man might actually have been amazed rather than angry—and if he was, then Norina’s expression of faint amusement made a kind of sense. But not one word in this obscure conversation seemed sensible to Garland, and these people, who had seemed so kind to each other, so remarkable, now seemed only very strange. The strangest thing of all was their apparent ability to understand each other.

  Norina wasn’t even looking at Garland directly. But she apparently knew his thoughts anyway and said, “Master cook, we’ve learned to cooperate with and tolerate each other, so now we’re surprised to remember that our logics are incompatible. You understand, the elements shape how we think? They also determine what we can see. Air logic enabled me to see something that Zanja, Medric, and Emil could not.”

  “You might have seen something,” Medric burst out, “But you had no vision.”

  “Oh, no,” said Norina coolly. “Zanja thinks she’s dead.”

  Norina stopped, for J’han had sharply kicked her foot. She glanced at him, then glanced at Leeba, who was raptly watching the action in the oven. Norina continued, rather obscurely, “So whatever you fire bloods thought to accomplish by doing what you did can still be accomplished.”

  “Madam Truthken!” said Karis fiercely. “What did you do?”

  J’han held up a hand to silence them, and went to squat by the oven with Leeba. He began talking with her about fire, lizards, and pies. Norina began to speak. She gave a quiet, precise, detailed, emotionless account of Zanja’s death. J’han and Leeba sang together a child’s song about the odd things that might be baked in a pie. They made up a verse about lizards. Norina concluded, “So Zanja thinks she’s dead, just as you thought she was dead. But those who deceive themselves, as she did, always know the actual truth, though often they do not know they know it, unless someone says it to them.”

  Medric muttered, “And I thought I was obscure.”

  Karis had covered her face. Garland thought he might see tears when her big hands lowered, but instead he saw something he did not expect: impatience. “Can we get her back?” she said. Then, more sharply, “Master seer! Is it possible?”

  Medric said, “It’s extremely unlikely. Don’t call me that.”

  Karis clenched her big hands, fingers interlocked. Fascinated, Garland watched her biceps swell. “How do we make it certain?”

  “Ow!” Medric had been upset from his cozy berth and dumped summarily to the floor.

  The gray man, who had come in seeming so frail, was on his feet, facing Karis, saying as ferociously as she, “Send your ravens, then! Tell her that her death was a farce! Bring her back to the certainty of a world in which change is impossible!”

  There was a silence. Karis unclenched her hands. “No, I think not,” she said.

  Emil said, more gently, “If you didn’t fail her when you were in despair, perhaps you won’t betray her out of hope either.”

  “I need to do nothing?” she said unhappily. “Even more?”

  Emil took two steps to her, and clasped her big hands in his. “With all your heart,” he said earnestly.

  “How much longer?” she said desperately.

  “Until Long Night,” said Medric, still sprawled on the floor. He sat up then, looking as surprised as Karis did. “Long Night? I have to write a book by then!”

  Emil turned to him, still clasping Karis’s hands. “Better make it a pamphlet,” he said.

  Chapter Twenty

  Two days into the six-day journey to the children’s garrison, the first snow fell: heavy, wet flakes that turned the roads again into quagmires, and forced Clement and her mounted escort of seven to spend a day and a night holed up in an abandoned barn. On the seventh day, when Clement should have already reached her destination and begun the journey home, it snowed again: real snow this time. The soldiers cursed, the horses stumbled and slid; in the tiny village that was the only settlement they could find, the people sullenly vacated an entire house for the soldiers, stabled their horses with the cows and sheep, and showed up at the door with placating offerings of cooked food.

  In the cozy room she had commandeered, Clement cracked open a shutter and observed the villagers below, who went watchfully about their business as the snow continued to steadily fall. At this rate, it would soon be knee deep. She had been a fool for relying upon the reprieve in weather that usually comes between autumn mud and winter snow. Now, she was stranded, with eight horses too valuable to abandon. She watched angrily, enviously, as a villager strode briskly across the snow in snow shoes, pulling a sledge laden with firewood, atop which perched a laughing young child in a red coat.

  And we sneer at them for going afoot,thought Clement. How hard is it to learn the virtues of traveling light? Apparently, too hard for us.

  *

  That poor village was the last before the wilderness. The road petered down to a mere path, snow-veiled, invisible except for blazes on the trees. Horses and dismounted soldiers alike went floundering through the woods. The sun appeared for a few hours and the snow began to melt, which increased the journey’s misery. After sunset the snowmelt froze to ice, and the wind picked up. Eyes burning, tears freezing, Clement hoarsely reassured her company that there wasa shelter.

  But when the soldiers at the head of the line shouted back that they had found it, Clement’s relief was short-lived. The shelter had an unmended roof, walls of rough-sawn planks with airy gaps between them, and a circle of stones for a hearth, with a hole in the roof above, that had allowed this hearth to be filled up with snow. For the horses there was corn and hay—that was a relief—but in place of firewood there was a half-barrel of cider. Whoever ran the supplies up and down the mountain during the warm season had apparently valued some comforts over others.

  They got what warmth could be had from huddling together as the wind whistled through
every knot and crack. They ate their rations cold, and Clement, to much approbation, allowed them each two cups of surprisingly potent ice-cold cider. Later, a few sleepers snored, but most of them sat awake like her, too cold to sleep, drearily awaiting dawn.

  They spent the next day in a bitter, steep climb, up a path that the wind had now blocked with snow drifts. The soldiers cursed whenever they had breath to spare; the weary horses sometimes balked and had to be dragged or beaten. The sun used the snow as a reflector to blind them.

  “Is that it?” someone asked.

  Watery-eyed, Clement stared up through a haze of light. There, at the top of the mountain, at the end of the path, in splendid isolation, stood the children’s garrison.

  Someone, a hazy shadow, took a noisy sniff. “Woodsmoke!”

  The company uttered a ragged cheer, and even the horses blundered forward with somewhat more enthusiasm. In the shadow of the building now, Clement’s scoured eyes could see more clearly, but the building still looked very strange. What had the sun done to her eyes? She rubbed them, and looked again. “The bloody thing is round! I thought I was losing my mind!”

  It really was no garrison at all. A fortress, maybe, with narrow, out-of-reach windows and an unfriendly, arched entrance big enough for a small wagon to pass through, but barred quite decisively by a padlocked iron gate, through which the snow had drifted.

  Clement peered between the bars. The dim passageway plunged into silent darkness. “Oh, hell,” said one of the exhausted soldiers who crowded up around her to take a look. “There’s no one here.”

  “Quiet as a tomb,” said another gloomily.

  “Not for long,” said Clement. She reached between the bars, and took hold of the frayed bell rope.