Maps, glyphs, and artwork
If you have some artwork you'd like to share with Laurie, please get in touch! shaftal01@lauriejmarks.com
(click sample to see whole image)
Map of Shaftal
Map of Shaftal by Jeanne Gomoll, included in Earth Logic. Jeanne, a professional map maker, had read a draft of the novel and declared that it needed a map.
Glyphs
Emil introduces Zanja to glyphs in Fire Logic:
Each glyph had a history or special use, and some of them were accompanied by lengthy expository tales that complicated rather than clarified their meaning. In addition, the meanings of the glyphs interacted with each other, so that two glyphs together meant something different from what they meant separately. To fully understand these glyphs might require lengthy study, and the entire system, Emil told Zanja, included a thousand symbols, though he was not certain if anyone alive was familiar with them all. He himself knew about half of them, and had despaired of ever learning the other half.
Glyphs are ideograms, and are associated with illustrations that help to explain their meaning.
(from Fire Logic © 2002)
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(1) The Owl, the Seeker
(colored pencil drawing by Laurie J. Marks)
Zanja restlessly sought and found the owl card, and showed it to Emil. “Is the person being carried a passenger, or prey?”
“Ah, well. That is the heart of the question, isn't it? Do we seek wisdom, or are we kidnapped by it?”
(from Fire Logic © 2002)
The owl glyph is Zanja's name sign, a symbol she associates with the owl god, Salos'a, the crosser of boundaries.
(click sample to see whole image)
(2) The Pyre, Death-and-Life
(colored pencil drawing by Laurie J. Marks)
J'han handed Zanja a stiff piece of paper, on which he had carefully drawn the glyph called Death-and-Life, or the Pyre, in the lower left hand corner. Above and around the ancient symbol, he had drawn an anatomically convincing picture of a person half in, half out of a burning fire. The half that was in the fire was skeleton; the other half was a very muscular woman...
In the Pyre, death becomes life; life becomes death. But if nothing changes, the fire cannot do its work of transformation. Thus the person in the pyre is trapped between death and life, and cannot speak at all, not even to say, Help me.
(from Earth Logic © 2004)
Death-and-Life is the G'deon's glyph, for when a G'deon dies, a new G'deon is created.
(3) West, the Traveler, and (4) East, the Fisher
(colored pencil drawings by Laurie J. Marks)
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(click sample to see whole image)
The glyphs were on adjacent pages, of course, for they were the glyphs East and West, and the illustrations were similar to those with which Zanja was familiar. In one, a woman in a rowboat fished in the ocean and the sun lay near the horizon, and in the other a man traveling in the mountains gazed towards the peaks and at the sun that rested upon them. Neither Seth nor Karis seemed to notice what was so strange about these, so Zanja tapped a finger on the glyph that marked the illustration known as West, and said, “This is the glyph for East. And this–” she turned the page, to the woman in the boat, “–this is West.”
Seth and Karis stared at the pages as Zanja flipped back and forth from one illustration to the other. Finally, Karis said, "How could anyone not know which way the ocean lies?”
(from Water Logic © 2007)
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(5) Water
Water glyph art by Jeanne Gomoll.
Zanja opened the cover, turned a few thick pages, and held the book open to the glyph that means Water. In the illustration, a woman leapt up joyously, flinging water from a shell. The water became waves, which curled around her, repeating in their curves the graceful curve of the dancer's back, arms, and flying hair. Water logic: Beautiful, and beyond explanation.
(from Water Logic © 2007)