Air Logic Read online

  Praise for Laurie J. Marks’s Elemental Logic novels:

  Fire Logic

   “Marks has created a work filled with an intelligence that zings off the page.” — Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

   “Marks is an absolute master of fantasy in this book. Her characters are beautifully drawn, showing tremendous emotional depth and strength as they endure the unendurable and strive always to do the right thing, and her unusual use of the elemental forces central to her characters’ lives gives the book a big boost. This is read-it-straight-through adventure!”— Booklist (Starred Review)

  “A deftly painted story of both cultures and magics in conflict. Marks avoids the black-and-white conflicts of generic fantasy to offer a window on a complex world of unique cultures and elemental magic.”— Robin Hobb

  “Cuts deliciously through the mind to the heart with the delicacy, strength, beauty, and surgical precision of the layered Damascus steel blade that provides one of the book’s central images.”— Candas Jane Dorsey

  “Laurie Marks brings skill, passion, and wisdom to her new novel. Entertaining and engaging—an excellent read!”— Kate Elliott

  “This is a treat: a strong, fast-paced tale of war and politics in a fantasy world where magic based on the four elements of alchemy not only works but powerfully affects the lives of those it touches. An unusual, exciting read.”— Suzy McKee Charnas

  “A glorious cast of powerful, compelling, and appealingly vulnerable characters struggling to do the right thing in a world gone horribly wrong. I couldn’t put this down until I’d read it to the end. Marks truly understands the complex forces of power, desire, and obligation.”— Nalo Hopkinson

  “Most intriguingly, about two-thirds of the way into the book, the low-key magical facets of her characters’ elemental magics rise away from simply being fancy “weapons” and evoke—for both the readers and the characters—that elusive sense of wonder.”— Charles de Lint, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction

  “An exquisite novel of quiet charm. Fire Logic is a tale of war and magic, of duty, love and betrayal, of despair encompassed by hope.”— SF Site

  Earth Logic

   “The powerful but subtle writing glows with intelligence, and the passionate, fierce, articulate, strong, and vital characters are among the most memorable in contemporary fantasy, though not for the faint of heart. Definitely for the thinking reader.”— Booklist (Starred Review)

  “The sequel to Fire Logic continues the tale of a woman born to magic and destined to rule. Vivid descriptions and a well-thought-out system of magic.”— Library Journal

  “Twenty years after the invading Sainnites won the Battle of Lilterwess, the struggle for the world of Shaftal is far from finished in Marks’s stirring, intricately detailed sequel to Fire Logic. . . . Full of love and humor as well as war and intrigue, this well-crafted epic fantasy will delight existing fans as surely as it will win new ones.”— Publishers Weekly

  “Rich and affecting. . . . A thought-provoking and sometimes heartbreaking political novel.”— BookPage

  “Earth Logic is not a book of large battles and heart-stopping chases; rather, it’s more gradual and contemplative and inexorable, like the earth bloods who people it. It’s a novel of the everyday folk who are often ignored in fantasy novels, the farmers and cooks and healers. In this novel, the everyday lives side by side with the extraordinary, and sometimes within it; Karis herself embodies the power of ordinary, mundane methods to change the world.”— SF Revu

  “It is an ambitious thing to do, in this time of enemies and hatreds, to suggest that a conflict can be resolved by peaceable means. Laurie Marks believes that it can be done, and she relies relatively little on magic to make it work.”— Cheryl Morgan, Emerald City

  “Earth Logic is intelligent, splendidly visualized, and beautifully written. Laurie Marks’s use of language is really tremendous.” — Paula Volsky

  “A dense and layered book filled with complex people facing impossible choices. Crammed with unconventional families, conflicted soldiers, amnesiac storytellers, and practical gods, the story also finds time for magical myths of origin and moments of warm, quiet humor. Against a bitter backdrop of war and winter, Marks offers hope in the form of various triumphs: of fellowship over chaos, the future over the past, and love over death.” — Sharon Shinn

  “A powerful and hopeful story where the peacemakers are as heroic as the warriors; where there is magic in good food and flower bulbs; and where the most powerful weapon of all is a printing press.” — Naomi Kritzer

  Water Logic

   “How gifts from the past, often unknown or unacknowledged, bless future generations; how things that look like disasters or mistakes may be parts of a much bigger pattern that produces greater, farther-reaching good results—such is the theme of Marks’ sweeping fantasy, which reaches its third volume with this successor to Fire Logic and Earth Logic.”— Booklist (Starred Review)

  “The third installment, after Fire Logic and Earth Logic, in Marks’s “Elemental Logic” series, explores the relationship of water, an element that travels through space and time, to those people who share its qualities or who oppose its power. Finely drawn characters and a lack of bias toward sexual orientation make this a thoughtful, challenging read that belongs in most adult fantasy collections.”— Library Journal

  “Frankly, it’s mind-bending stuff, and refreshing…. I haven’t read the previous two Logic books by Marks so this was like a flashback to my childhood. Interestingly, while there was some character history that I missed, from what I’ve seen of Marks’ writing style, I didn’t necessarily miss much explanation anyways. The world is presented as-is, and of course all the people in it know what is going on and why. I found the book quite intriguing, since Marks does have some unusual magic going on, and there’s certainly no overkill in the infodump department.”— James Schellenberg, The Cultural Gutter

  “This is a genuinely original and subversive work of fantasy literature. It’s the real thing: capable of changing the world, or at least the way you see it. . . . there’s the depth and mythic sweep of Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea novels, with a seasoned, mature sense of a world where adults make hard choices and live with them.

  “Marks’s characters are real people who breathe and sleep and sweat and love; the food has flavor and the landscape can break your heart. You don’t find this often in any contemporary fiction, much less in fantasy: a world you can plunge yourself into utterly and live in with great delight, while the pages turn, and dream of after.”— Ellen Kushner

  “Picking up the threads left loose at the end of Earth Logic, Marks’s third Elemental Logic tale weaves three story lines through her tapestry of a war-torn world whose elemental forces are dangerously out of balance. . . . Marks plays the fantasy of her unfolding epic more subtly here than in previous volumes, and the resulting depiction of intransigent cultures in conflict, rich with insight into human nature and motives, will resonate for modern readers.”— Publishers Weekly

  Air Logic

  Elemental Logic: Book Four

  Laurie J. Marks

  Small Beer Press

  Easthampton, MA

  This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are either fictitious or used fictitiously.

  Copyright © 2019 by Laurie J. Marks (lauriejmarks.com). All rights reserved.

  Small Beer Press

  150 Pleasant Street #306

  Easthampton, MA 01027

  smallbeerpress.com

  weightlessbooks.com

  [email protected]

  Distributed to the trade by Consortium
.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Marks, Laurie J., author.

  Title: Air logic / Laurie J. Marks.

  Description: Easthampton, MA : Small Beer Press, [2019] | Series: Elemental

  logic ; book 4

  Identifiers: LCCN 2019006516 (print) | LCCN 2019008423 (ebook) | ISBN

  9781618731616 | ISBN 9781618731609 (alk. paper)

  Subjects: | GSAFD: Fantasy fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3613.A756 (ebook) | LCC PS3613.A756 A37 2019 (print) |

  DDC 813/.6--dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019006516

  Paper edition printed on 50# Natures Natural 30% Recycled Paper by the Versa Press in East Peoria, IL.

  Text set in Centaur MT.

  Cover art © 2018 Kathleen Jennings (kathleenjennings.com).

  For my found daughter, Anna Williams.

  Song of the Four Elements

  The way of earth is to make and till

  Earth needs fire to enrich its soil

  Earth wants air so its storehouse fills

  Four elements for balance.

  The way of air is to judge and prove

  Air by earth can be beloved

  Air needs water so it can move

  Four elements for balance.

  The way of fire is to see and know

  Fire with earth can be renewed

  Fire needs water to ease its woe

  Four elements for balance.

  The way of water is to change and sing

  Water needs air for its lightning

  Water wants fire for divining

  Four elements for balance.

  Four enemies, or four friends

  Four elements to tear and mend

  Four elements to begin and end

  Four elements for balance.

  Prologue

  Four enemies, or four friends

  Four elements to tear and mend.

  The southern coast of Shaftal is a maze of peninsulas, inlets, and hidden harbors. It is the ocean that has shredded the landscape to rags, some say. But others say that the land’s many fingers are stealing space from the sea. In that region, two hundred years ago, in the morning of a beautiful summer day when nearly everyone was working in the fields, a tremendous earthquake happened. There were many injuries and some deaths, when people were buried in the rubble of stone farmhouses. Tadwell G’deon happened to be in the southeast already, and people soon brought the severely injured people to him. The G’deons of Shaftal usually heal with great discrimination; but on this occasion Tadwell healed everyone who reached him alive, including farm animals. He worked day and night until he was gray with exhaustion, and still he worked, ignoring the Paladins’ pleas that he lie down and rest.

  An account of this earthquake can be read in any history book. But that Tadwell G’deon had caused that earthquake was known only to the border people who saw him do it: two fire bloods, Arel na’Tarwein and his kinswoman, Zanja na’Tarwein of the Ashawala’i; and several water people: Grandmother Ocean, and various members of her Essikret tribe. Tadwell had been made angry because Grandmother Ocean had meddled with the course of history, and because Zanja na’Tarwein had stolen a precious book from the library at Kisha. But once his temper cooled, he was ashamed of what he had done.

  Tadwell’s lover, Arel, like Zanja in her own time, was the speaker for the Ashawala’i. Arel became cold and distant, and soon left the House of Lilterwess to return to his home in the northern mountains. Summer became autumn, and then winter came, and Tadwell thought he would never see him again.

  One day in spring, after mud season had passed, when the barren twigs of the trees began to be decorated by tufts of brilliant green, Tadwell worked in the kitchen garden of the House of Lilterwess, planting cabbage seedlings he had started in the solarium when snow still covered the ground. In spring, earth witches, normally stubborn and predictable, often became restless and changeable. But Tadwell continued doleful, irritable, and solitary, and even the simple pleasure of planting did not delight him. Then he looked up with surprise from the wet soil, for a familiar, long-absent person had stepped into the garden.

  Tadwell and Arel stood facing each other. Then Arel squatted down and took a seedling from the basket and planted it.

  They worked together for an hour or more before Tadwell finally spoke. “You seem recovered from that weakness of the lungs. I worried you would fall ill again during the bitter mountain winter.”

  Arel did not reply. Since he often complained of the Shaftali people’s constant chatter, Tadwell remained silent for another long while. He turned to get more seedlings and found Arel gazing at him. It struck him how much Arel na’Tarwein looked like the thief, Zanja na’Tarwein, except that his warrior braids were intact and tied in an intricate knot that he had trouble doing for himself. Sometimes, though, Tadwell had seen his hair loose, kinked from the braids and hanging past his waist, his only clothing.

  Tadwell sighed and looked away. He said, “The lexicon stolen by your kinswoman has been returned to the library where it belongs. I have thought for many months about what you said, that your kinswoman must have been compelled to steal the lexicon for reasons she could not say. My own behavior was far less honorable than hers, when I killed some of my own people, destroyed a portion of my own land, and lost the esteem of the one whose opinion matters most.”

  He returned to planting cabbage seedlings, joylessly.

  Arel continued to work beside him. Only when the seedlings basket lay empty did he speak. “I have taught my people a new song.”

  He straightened his back and began to sing. Although Tadwell knew that Arel was a poet, he had never heard him sing. He sang in his own language, but Tadwell could understand how sweet and sorrowful the song was. When Arel finished, Tadwell rubbed his face dry on his shoulder. Arel said, “If I am very lucky, then someday Zanja na’Tarwein will hear that song, and will understand its meaning.”

  Time and knowledge travel forward. Zanja had traveled backwards in time and thus knew secrets normally concealed by the current of time, but she had not revealed her knowledge of the future to anyone, not even to Tadwell himself. To keep a secret from a fire blood like Arel, however, is not a simple matter of holding one’s tongue. Tadwell said, “Zanja told me that she was a ghost from the future, but that is all I know. I can’t guess what you’re saying to me.”

  Arel’s hands, sprinkled with grains of dirt, rested on his knees. Zanja also had possessed this physical stillness.

  Arel said, “I believe that the water witch transported her against time because the witch needed a tremendous change to occur, and she knows that Zanja is a hinge of history. If Zanja is a hinge of history, she tried to steal the lexicon because it has been lost in her time and is sorely needed. So I have sent my song to my kinswoman—it will journey from one singer to the next, until, long after I have died and become dust, Zanja hears it. You can do the same thing with the lexicon, Tadwell, because you are the G’deon.”

  Tadwell looked at his hands, still the blunt, powerful hands of a stone mason, though he did that work only for pleasure now, or to escape the problems of Shaftal when they seemed too tangled a knot to untie. He said, “The artists and scholars already are making an accurate copy of the book, which will take a few years. When that work is complete, I intend to secure the original book against harm and leave it for her in an obscure place. I must trust that fire logic will reveal its hiding place to her.”

  Arel turned his head, and his sharp features were softened by a smile. “She will know someone who lives at High Meadow Farm in Basdown. She told me this.”

  “Will you travel to Basdown with me, when the book has been copied, and help me to hide it for her to find?”

  “Years from now, when the copying of the books i
s complete? Yes, I will.”

  Arel offered his hand, and Tadwell clasped it, and they rose up together.

  Part One: Earth

  The way of earth is to make and till

  Earth needs fire to enrich its soil

  Earth wants air so its storehouse fills

  Four elements for balance.

  Chapter 1

  “I want to stay up all night,” Leeba said as she walked with her father, J’han Healer, to the great room.

  “Tonight is the shortest night,” he said. “Between sunset and sunrise are just a couple of hours of darkness. Even the sun is exhausted from lack of sleep.”

  “I know.” At nearly age seven, Leeba knew everything worth knowing, but her parents had entered into a conspiracy to exasperate her with needless instruction. Today the streets of Watfield were filled with rare pleasures—there was music, and puppets, and people on stilts, and games, and prizes, and sweets. J’han had said he would take her, but—he always said “but”—first they must play the mouse game.