"Elemental Logic - 03 - Water Logic" - читать интересную книгу автора (Marks Laurie)

Water LogicWater Logic
Laurie J Marks

Prologue: Seeking Balance Fire
If it can be imagined, it can be done, said Emil.
Emil, Medric, and Zanja, all fire bloods, had each by an equally unlikely route
become governors of Shaftal. Yet only Emil even knew what a government was. He
alone had been a minor thread in the vast tapestry of the old government before
it unraveled. Children not then born had now borne children of their
ownЧchildren who expected only bloodshed and oppression, who did not know and
could not imagine how it had once been.
The patterns of the past can no longer serve, but people believe that strength
lies in tradition, said Emil.
Zanja said, because of tradition they believe in Karis, little though she wants
to be believed in.
No, earth is what they believe in, said Emil.
But even earth is unstable, said Medric. For the power of any witch arises from
lack of balance. What we must have is the steadiness that comes from balance:
the insight and passion of fire, the solidity and fertility of earth, the ideals
and intelligence of air, the fluidity and vision of water. When, though
informing and contradicting each other, the elements are in balance, then they
become stable, and then we have strength.
But how can an entire country be in balance? asked Zanja. How can we do now what
we must, while also devising a future?
Oh, it's an impossible task, said Medric. Let us begin it at once.
Water
Ocean stands knee-deep in the future.
The water is warm. The harbor is protected. There is a narrow beach,
insurmountable cliffs, a pounding waterfall. These have not been enough.
She is a child when she flees there with the remnant of the tribe. The strangers
have come, with their weapons and their anger. Ocean is there, and now she is
the leader of the tribe. She finds a haven for them. She is standing there now,
but the tribe has gone.
The people have built larger boats, and have learned to grab the wind with them.
They have slipped between the rocks and dared the open sea. Ocean returns to the
ship, to every ship, in every storm, in every passage. She returns and the sea
never takes the sailors, and they find the way back to the harbor with barrels
of salted fish. They go out and meet other ships, and they trade for all that
their small harbor does not give them. To this chary shore, to toothed rocks, to
hungry waves, they return, she returns, the tide rises and falls and she
returns, and the pattern is failing.
She stands in childhood; she stands in adulthood; an old woman now, she stands
in the future. The tide flows, in and out, and always inevitably there is less.
The pattern will be failing, the pattern has always been failing, and it has
failed. She will stand in the future, is standing there, and she is alone. The
pattern has failed. It must not fail. She returns and again she begins.
Earth
Months had passed, and every night Seth still thought about Clem, a weary,
haunted, quiet woman, making a difficult journey in dead of winter. They had
made love in the way of strangers who are compelled towards each otherЧa