Free Fire Logic by Laurie J. Marks Page B

she never knew what to call the peculiar logic of herself under smoke.
    She got clumsily to her knees in a loud crackling of frost. The horse lifted his huge head and yawned, ground his teeth, then snorted wetly. They had made their bed in the undergrowth at the edge of a wood, where the snow had largely collected overhead rather than on the ground. That had been sensible of them, though most of the sense had probably come from the horse.
    Karis tried to stand up, but staggered to her knees again. The horse blundered to his feet, dislodging a sudden avalanche of snow from overhead. He nosed her encouragingly. “Smoke,” Karis explained. “But never graceful. No more than you.”
    With the help of a slender tree trunk, she hauled herself upright. Despair was always worst in the morning; she fended it off with curses and eventually was able to drag her ungainly body onto the horse’s back. Stung by her urgency, the horse jumped forward. She clung to him grimly, angry at her weakness, angry at the irresistible impulse which drove her out on this insane fool’s errand, angry at the bitter poverty of spirit from which her anger came. This dark and frigid morning, where dawn seemed unlikely ever to break, did not bode well at all for the day that lay ahead.

    Zanja’s voice gave out. In the bitter cold, the god stood sentinel, silent long after she had ceased to weep. When she turned her head, the straw crackled where her tears had frozen. A hush had fallen, and she saw the faint shimmer of snowfall outside the window.
    Zanja’s story was nearly done, and soon Lord Death would let her go free. She continued, “I don’t know why the Sainnites didn’t kill me. When they reached their garrison, it seems they were disgraced. Perhaps, in the confusion, orders were bungled, papers were mislaid. Perhaps they simply wanted to get me out of their sight. I don’t know how, but somehow I ended up here.”
    “Ha!” said the god.
    “So I did not set out to cheat you. Haven’t I spent my days in pleading with the gods to allow me to die? I am tortured even in my dreams. I walk the path to my village and I see it filled with my people. Ransel is there waiting for me. How will I explain my long delay?” The raven seemed to shrug, and Zanja was tempted to grab hold of him and twist his neck until the backbone popped, just to let him know what paralysis was like. She could no longer take deep breaths to calm herself. The god moved cautiously out of reach. Zanja spoke, her voice shaking. “You bid me die in joy rather than in despair, but the only joy I can imagine is to walk down that path, to enter the Land of the Sun and be free of this body, this prison. Is that too much to ask?”
    The god said, “You ask not for too much, but for too little.”
    “What?” Zanja peered into the shadows at the black shape of the raven, who she suddenly remembered was a trickster. “I am too stupid for riddles.”
    “It is no riddle, but a choice. Do you choose to die?”
    She stared at him. Her heartbeat sputtered like a candle about to go out. In the silence, she thought she could hear a quiet footstep in the hall outside her door. But it was too early for the guard to make his noisy rounds. Bewildered, she whispered, “Now you mock me, Lord Death.”
    “No,” said the god gently. “I am giving you the choice.”
    No keys jingled in the frozen silence, but Zanja heard the lock of her cell door turn. The guard had not come in to feed her for days, but the door swung open without a creak from the rust-caked hinges. A presence filled the doorway. Lord Death spread his wings and lifted suddenly into the darkness.
    Zanja spoke to the vacancy where the god had been. “Then I choose to live.” Then, she lay stunned by her own stupidity, asking herself what she wanted to live for.
    She heard Lord Death’s voice in the darkness, but he was not speaking to her. “I am your witness.”
    “I heard, good raven,” rasped a voice as harsh as Lord