Fire Logic (4 page)

The flashing mirrors of the sentinels alerted the village of her coming, and her clan brother, Ransel, met her on the path as he usually did. “Zanja! Home so soon? Did you grow tired of breaking the hearts of the Shaftali women and decide to break the hearts of
katrim
instead?”

She gave a snort of amusement, for Ransel knew perfectly well that she had no great accumulation of discarded lovers on either side of the border. “I grew tired, anyway,” she said.

“And you missed me?”

She eyed him with mocking doubt. “Well…”

He laughed. Ransel was always laughing, always mocking, always telling jokes or making up crazy riddles. The raven god, a trickster himself and a great practical joker, had chosen Ransel to serve him, and Ransel did so with unremitting enthusiasm. “Say you were lonely!” he teased. “Admit that the inconquerably self-sufficient Zanja na’Tarwein was about to expire from the poison of solitude! Say that—”

He could go on like this forever if not interrupted. “I was,” she said. “Terribly lonely. As I always am.”

He fell silent. She put her arm around his waist, and he gripped her affectionately across the shoulders. “Well,” he finally said, ‘You’re lonely no longer. Let’s go climbing tomorrow.”

“Climbing! And what exactly do you think I’ve been doing for eight days now?”

“You’ve been climbing alone. Climbing with your brother, that is completely different.”

“No doubt. Anything done with you is completely different. But the elders will want me tomorrow.”

“Oh,” he sneered. “The elders!”

“Has the weather been fine?”

“Other than the occasional touch of frost and flurry of snow.”

“Will it hold until the day after tomorrow?”

“It might. But whether I will be offended at being put off to accommodate a bunch of creaking, self-important—”

“—Leaders of the people,” she said pointedly.

“You’re no fun,” he grumbled. “Did you bring me something?” He glanced hopefully at the heavily laden horses.

“I’ll answer that question when we go climbing.”

“Aha! A bribe! Well then, since you know my price, I shall agree.”

They walked companionably together, behind the horses, who kept up an eager pace because they could smell the nearness of home. “So tell me the news,” Zanja said. She did not usually have to prompt him.

He said, soberly for once, “Well, I don’t know a good way to tell you this, my sister. The Speaker is dead.”

She stopped in her tracks. Ransel’s momentum carried him a couple of steps beyond her, and he turned around. “Here,” he said. “Sit for a moment. The horses know the way.”

He squatted on his heels beside her in the middle of the path. “It was a quiet thing. One morning, he simply did not wake up. Salos’a had come during the night to carry him across his last boundary.”

“Without anyone there to remind him of the stories of his life.”

“I am sure there was no need. Salos’a knows his life already.”

“I wanted to be there at his death. And I needed to ask him…” To the astonishment and embarrassment of them both, she abruptly began to weep, and could not get herself under control for some time. As much as she looked forward to Ransel’s staunch affection, she had looked forward to her long conversations with her old teacher, the only one she could confide in. Though she had taken over his duties and position, she still relied heavily on his advice. Now, when she needed most to ask him what to do, Salos’a had taken him off to a far land where he could not possibly be so badly needed.

She raised her head at last. Ransel, uncertain what to do in this unprecedented situation, had simply looked away and was courteously pretending not to have noticed her tears. She stood up, wiping her face, and they continued down the path. After a while, Ransel, somewhat muted at first, began to tell her all the other events of the summer, as he always did. By the time they reached the Asha Valley, where Zanja’s people thrived in peaceful comfort, she had gotten more surefooted as she tread the precarious edge of sorrow, and was able to keep from falling into it again.

The next day, she spoke to the elders, who gathered in the elderhouse to hear her. She told them of her summer with the Sainnites, and she told them of the fear she now carried with her. While living with the Sainnites, she had learned the extent of their arrogance and their ignorance. She had learned that the Sainnites feared Shaftal: they feared its supposedly conquered people for their tenacious refusal to give up the fight; they feared the rage and bitterness that they themselves had caused; they even feared the long, harsh winter that to them seemed arbitrary and undeserved as a curse from a vengeful god. And she had learned to fear the Sainnites in return, because she learned that, because they were exiles in a land they detested, they could be destructive and vindictive in a way no sane people could tolerate. She reminded the elders of the weapons that kill at a distance, and of the smoke drug that insidiously killed the will and spirit of Shaftali city dwellers.

All morning and well into the afternoon, she tried to convince the elders of their danger. When she was finished, they placidly replied that the Sainnites were indeed dangerous, and so it was fortunate that they had no reason to even notice a remote tribal people like theirs.

They agreed to post additional sentinels in a wide circle a day’s journey outside the valley, so that if a danger were to approach them, they were would least know of it in advance. But they refused to develop a plan for how to defend the village against attack, since it would have required them to explain the danger to the Ashawala’i people. “When you are old,” they said to Zanja, “You will understand. Now, it is difficult for you to see how easily that which is right and good can be changed, and how difficult it is to change it back again. You say that our people are endangered by these Sainnites. But you do not see that fearing the Sainnites would endanger them even more certainly.”

On a day as warm as summer, Zanja and Ransel went climbing to a place they knew, a high meadow not too far from the groaning edge of a glacier. From there, it seemed they could see to the end of the world. Ransel entertained her with accounts of his many love affairs, and then advised her at length about which of the women
katrim
might be amenable to her advances this winter. She listened carefully, for he was a good matchmaker. Eventually, their conversation trailed off, and they lay a long time in silence, half asleep in the warm sunshine.

“You are like an umbilical cord,” she said to him after a while.

Ransel had a sweet tooth, and she had surreptitiously brought him a tin of sweetmeats from Shaftal. “An umbilical cord!” he exclaimed stickily. “What kind of compliment is that for a
katrim
?”

“I didn’t mean to compliment you. You’re conceited enough already. I meant to say that the Speaker had no friend like you, and I’m thinking that he must have dreaded coming home much more than I do. Even with your help, it’s a painful passage.”

Ransel unwrapped the stiff waxed paper from another sweetmeat. “He never was contented,” he said. “But then, neither are you.”

“I’ll always think I am his student.” Zanja rolled over in the warm grass, startling a couple of tiny rabbits back into their holes. “An umbilical cord,” she repeated. “You connect and nourish me, and I do nothing but kick you in the stomach.”

Ransel gestured with the sweetmeats tin, his mouth too busy for talking.

“I corrupt you,” she interpreted, “with forbidden luxuries. That is no gift.”

“Mmm,” he said. “Good thing your grim moods always pass, for they are very tiresome. I love you out of self-interest, as you know full well. Even though you whisper not a word to me of all you see and know, people still think that I am privy to your secrets, which gives me an excuse to act self-important. Not only that,” he continued, while she uttered a snort of laughter, “But since you are a presciant, you can save me from my own idiocy, if you care enough to do it.”

“So long as I’m beside you.”

“Well, your lengthy absences are a drawback. But when matters go badly, you surely are the one I want guarding my back. Whoever’s with you will survive just as you will. Won’t your prescience send you running home when I most need you here? If it does, I swear I’ll do whatever you command, for I’d rather be alive and humble than dead and proud.”

Zanja closed her eyes and pretended to doze in the sunshine. She felt so tired after her summer with the Sainnites that she wondered whether an entire winter’s rest would revive her. But she had not slept well since her homecoming, which was one of many things she could not tell Ransel, lest she do him a worse disservice than she did by smuggling in comfits for him. Only the elders of the people were judged mature and experienced enough that they could safely know of the world beyond the mountains without being changed or corrupted by the knowledge.

“Why do you sigh?” Ransel asked.

“I suppose I do have talent,” Zanja said. “But it never seems talent enough.”

Ransel nodded, and said sententiously, “The na’Tarweins are never satisfied.”

Chapter 3

Much that Zanja admired about the Shaftali people began to disappear. She saw hospitality replaced by suspicion, and open-handedness replaced by closed fists. When once strangers had been happy to sit down with her and talk about their lives, she now could not enter a tavern unless she was willing to sit in solitude with a circle of silence surrounding her. Meanwhile, in the Asha Valley, her people looked after their croplands and hunted in the forest, herded their goats and spun the goatswool. Children respected and learned from their elders.
Katrim
visited other scattered peoples that inhabited the mountains, and returned with gifts of beautiful pottery, beaverskin robes, and delicate shells. The
katrim
patrolled and watched over their territory, and no danger appeared. Zanja, who year after year was reminded anew of the Sainnites’ brutality, did not become complacent. But in the Asha Valley, the peaceful, timeless effort of her people’s lives remained undisturbed and unchanged. Perhaps it was true that ignorance would protect the Ashawala’i against corruption.

Fifteen years had passed since the Fall of the House of Lilterwess, when one summer Zanja began to hear of trouble in the Midlands, where in the region of Rees a particularly brutal Sainnite commander was devastating the countryside in a largely successful effort to decimate the Paladins who opposed him. Working her way southward to find out as much as she could, Zanja was accosted in nearly every region by wrought-up Paladins. Finally, four days’ journey from the border of Rees, she found herself surrounded by one-time farmers, whose hardening to Sainnite violence had left them incapable of recognizing the subtle fact that not all strangers are enemies.

They confiscated her dagger, her horses and pack animals, her money, and all her gear and trade goods, and told her she should be grateful to be escaping with her life. It was useless and dangerous to argue with them, so she did as she was told, walking away down the road in the opposite direction from the one she wished to go. But as soon as she knew she was no longer observed, she returned back through the woods. She was able to travel quickly across country, running most of the time, keeping the road in sight until she had caught up with her stolen horses and their gleeful escort. She followed, careful to keep anger from overriding common sense, and watched from a distance as the Paladins finally divided her belongings and separated, each going in a separate direction.

It seemed clear that they were not bringing her horses and belongings to their company commander. Zanja returned to the original watchpost by the side of the road, and spent an uncomfortable night in the undergrowth, within hearing of the garrulous farmers, who kept themselves awake with storytelling. At dawn, a lone foot traveler approached through the woods to take their report and bring them fresh bread to eat. When the lone traveler left, she led Zanja to a remote, apparently abandoned farmhouse. Zanja had only to walk up to the door and knock.

“I seek the commander of Damar Company,” she said politely to the startled Paladin who opened the door. “I am Zanja na’Tarwein, the Speaker for the Ashawala’i.”

She heard the distinct voice of the woman she had followed these two days, exclaiming, “Name of Shaftal! I kept thinking someone was following me, but I thought it would be impossible…”

So many of the Paladin commanders had been killed during and shortly after the Fall that a great number of people had been promoted beyond their abilities or talent. Fortunately, when she was allowed to enter, the commander of Damar Company eyed her with a certain intelligence, at least. “You are a long way from the Ashawala’i,” he said.

“I try to learn what I can about the dangers that might threaten my people. When I heard about the troubles in Rees, I came down to see what was happening.”

The commander said skeptically, “Rees is no place for dilettantes this year.”

“I am a soldier like you.” Zanja folded her scarred hands before her, though she doubted he could see them in the dim light. “But the people of your command took my weapon—not here, but on the road to Rees. And they took my horses, my money, and my trade goods.”

The woman exclaimed, “They never mentioned—”

The commander hushed her. “Fighting the Sainnites is expensive, I regret to say, and Damar is a poor region.”

“So the Paladins of Damar have become thieves?”

The commander gestured impatiently. “We are at war,” he said, as though that excused every immoral act. “But I will see to it that your horses and belongings are recovered.”

He did not say that he would punish the wrongdoers, but Zanja had no choice but to be satisfied for now. So, because there was no help for it, she became the guest of Damar Company while waiting for her belongings to be recovered. At least she was able to use the time to her advantage, for the commander sent her with an escort into Rees.

In Rees, she saw a village that had been burned to the ground because one of the households had sheltered a Paladin. She heard about entire families slaughtered because one member served in Rees Company. She saw pale, hopeless veterans with legs and arms amputated. She finally met some of the survivors of Rees Company: harried, half-mad fighters who hurried her out of their camp because they feared that the Sainnite commander would exercise her near-supernatural ability to find them wherever they sheltered. Zanja and her companion gave the poor souls all the food they had, for the Rees farmers were so terrorized that they dared not feed their own soldiers any more, and the few surviving Paladins were starving.

Zanja returned to Damar much sobered, to find that most of her goods and horses had been recovered, and that the rest, the commander assured her, would arrive soon. Soon after her return, a messenger arrived, and the commander summoned Zanja. “Can you read?”