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when
she died, her lover, her child, and her dearest friends would not be lost to
her. It was an extraordinary act of self-deception: the kind of magic that
fire
bloods excel at. Norina was there when that self-deception failed, and Zanja
began to weep.
She wept for days. And then she took the dagger Karis had forged for her, and
laid it on the bed she and Karis had shared all these years, and she roughly
bound the pages of her book with a leather seam and set the book aside, and,
as
the apple harvest began, she started to go out walking, from before sunrise
to
past sunset. Every night, when Norina saw her at supper, she saw a woman who
had
become a little less familiar. And still Norina did not talk about what she
saw,
to Zanja or to anyone.
A letter came from JÆhan, much dirtied by its hand-to-hand journey, that told
of
births attended, bones mended, and lives ended, and finished with a sentence
that his raven had begun to talk to him, occasionally. Norina wondered if she
would ever see him, or her daughter, again. So even she lived through the
harvest season in a state of loss, but she was never bewildered by it. She
had
never hesitated to sacrifice passion to principle; she was an air blood and
she
knew no more rational way to live. So, like Zanja, she was uniquely qualified
for the task that lay before her.
Even as Zanja began the process of transforming herself, Medric and Emil
began
to discuss, painfully at first but with increasing fascination, how to make
that
transformation permanent. Fire logic is the logic of insight, of seeing in
symbols and stories and events more meanings than an entirely sane person
could
see. To turn that seeing into an act of magic was rarely done, and there were
no
rules for how to do it. As the two scholars talked, their plans inevitably
became convoluted. To enact in ritual a symbolic understanding was
complicated.
Soon, as Norina expected, they asked her to take a role in the ritual, and so
she was able to start making plans of her own.
Zanja said that it must not happen at home, and so it must be done outside,
and
since they could not do fire magic without a fire, that meant it must happen
before the rains began. Because the ravens no longer even offered weather
reports, Norina kept an eye on the behavior of the local earth talents. Earth
witches were rare, but every farmhold had people with earth talent, who, like
JÆhan, had earned the reputation of knowing how to do things right, whose
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mundane advice about building and planting was often sought and always
followed.
When Norina noticed that the work of harvest had become frenetic, the four of
them could delay their terrible act no longer.
The last day of ZanjaÆs life began with brilliant sunshine: a light that
blinded
them as they walked eastward, for the sun no longer rose quickly as it had
during summer, and instead hovered along the horizon for half the morning.
The
four of them set forth in the dazzle of sunrise and stark, sweeping shadows
that
twisted away from the sideways lift of the sun. They were hailed from an
apple
orchard where battered baskets of red and green apples clustered under the
yellowing trees, awaiting the wagon that would take them to the cider mill.
Their pockets were filled with apples by the friendly, busy farmers, and
later,
a girl ran down from a dairy to give them a wedge of cheese and ask about the
weather. Emil sighed under the burden of neighborliness, but Zanja crunched
an
apple as she walked and took the slender, beautiful blade out of her boot to
cut
them all pieces of cheese. She was as calm and remote as Norina had ever seen
her and beneath the unruffled surface of her visage lay the drowned corpse of
her vital mind.
Medric interrupted his anxious gabble to ask abruptly, ôWhere are the ravens?ö
ôAbsent,ö said Emil briskly, not even bothering to scan the sky or the tops
of
the picked apple trees they now passed. The sound of hammers making
last-minute
repairs on a leaky roof was loud against the whining of the crickets.
Karis was making herself as remote in her way as Zanja was in hers, and both
for
the same reason. Only Norina called it heroism, and only to herself. To
disturb
the frail fabric of the fire bloodsÆ illusions would have been disastrous.
Emil showed them to the high place that he had in mind, where ancient oaks
spread a vast canopy, and there was a wide, comforting vista: a long horizon,
a
brilliant stretch of sky. The busy, distant cider mill could be seen, tucked
into the curve of a brightly shining stream. They distracted themselves with
gathering wood, but once the fire was lit, distractions were no longer
necessaryùthe momentum of the ritual took control of them.
Zanja obediently followed Norina into the shelter of a grove of saplings.
There,
among the lobed leaves edged with autumnÆs bronze, she looked somberly
upward,
into the verdant shadows of one of the ancient trees. Norina followed her
gaze,
and thought she saw the hunched shape of a waiting owl. ôSalosÆa?ö she asked,
and Zanja gave a nod: the god that had made her a crosser of boundaries had
come
for her, to escort her soul across its final border. Norina looked narrowly
at
the waiting owl; it looked like an ordinary bird to her.
Norina said, ôYour belongings connect you to this world, so you must give
everything youÆve brought with you to be burned in the fire, including your
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clothing. And your hair.ö
Along with the pieces of her clothing, Zanja silently handed Norina the
little
knife from her boot, and the battered pack of glyph cards that she carried in
a
pouch hung from her belt. Her fingers struggled with buttons as her gaze kept
returning to the shadowy owl; she picked ineffectually at a knot; Norina
finally
knelt to undo her bootstraps for her. Zanja stood quiet among the leaves that
twitched a bit in a passing breeze. Now, stripped of her Shaftali clothing,
she
had never looked so alien: thin and wild as a ferret, her dark skin covered
with
a patchwork of scars, with some of her warriorÆs braids coming undone and her
coarse black hair brushing the backs of her thighs. Norina gave her clothing
that Emil had acquired somewhere: a rough, woolen tunic and baggy trousers,
simple shoes, and leggings of goatskin with the hair still attached. But then
Norina had to dress her, for Zanja simply stood like an addle-pate, with the
clothing falling from her hands.
Norina had done much planning, but that planning proved all but unnecessary.
It
was easy to hide ZanjaÆs discarded cards and knife in the leggings as she
tied
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