Hammerfall

More, with a caravan to feed and the Ila’s charge, the sellers spread out their wares under the palms. It might take them a season to collect their goods in pay, but they would be city goods, and the haste to show what they had to trade became a frenzy of voices.

“Come help our guide,” Marak said, and Hati and Norit and the au’it came with him, and walked beside their young caravan master, for even at the Ila’s charge, they were not anxious to be cheated. When a merchant proposed an outrageous price for palm-fiber cord, Hati sniffed, examined it minutely, and the price came down. Norit sniffed when the price of salve seemed high; and the word flowed by scarcely perceptible signals: the prices revised themselves to reason.

At the Ila’s charge Tofi bought a few dried fruits for the journey, per head, and dry-bread, and salt, and all these things were bundled up to stores.

But Marak, at the Ila’s charge, asked four silver rings from the trade master and gave them two each to Norit and to Hati, his one indiscretion. He was not surprised when Norit, exchanging them, came back with a fine striped aifad of the eastern Lakht pattern and a pot of ci

Hati bought two silver bracelets, redemption for her honor. It was the bracelets he had intended, jewelry for Hati; but out of fairness he asked a gift for Norit as well. And Tofi, once he heard, bought bracelets each for his women, for Maol and Jurid. Then the ex-soldiers had grief from Malin, and Malin turned up with two bracelets. How had that happened? Marak asked himself with suspicion, and set the au’it to finding out where the money had come from, but to no avail. Even fear of the Ila could not unravel that mystery.

At such a spreading of coin and charges about, however, the whole of Kais Pori laid out a feast, dried and fresh fruit, and delicately spiced peas, with baked roots swimming in rare grease, a delicacy which some of the poor of the northwest had never sampled.

They all sat on the ground, farmer-style, and sucked grease from their fingers and dipped them in salt until they had had enough of both. Their au’it and the water-au’it had put their heads together, and talked, and talked, all through the meal. The villagers danced. Even they, the madmen, danced, and the prostitute and the women with Tofi danced, while the antheiri hummed their notes and the drums thumped a rapid rhythm.

The drums became a voice, however, and the voices called out of the east. They drank beer while the voices di

Afterward, shamelessly, in the open-sided tent, their own, and ignoring the roofs of the village, Marak lay down with two women of very different kind. Hati, with new bracelets shining in the dim light, silver against dark skin, let her skilled hands go wandering, and drew his where she wished them. Norit was shy, but cried out scandalously until Hati stopped her with her hand across her mouth, laughing, with embarrassed glances toward the nearby houses.

Norit’s eyes remained eloquent, and her whole body trembled and sweated with passion. Norit made love amid her madness, and said she saw a shining hall, and lights, and people walked there.

Marak himself saw the cave of suns; and Hati swore the same. The voices cried at them together, each in their own names, and the visions were the same vision and the whole world slid away toward the east under their backs.

They lay in each other’s arms all night.

Malin and a certain woman of the village, the au’it reported, obliged various of the men, and the soldiers were out of sorts, so perhaps the mystery of Malin’s bracelets was solved; but Marak let it go.

There was this to surviving the desert together, that life was worth celebrating, and those who had been wise could turn foolish and those who had been fools came out wise men; and if that was the source of Malin’s bracelets, Marak decided that was Malin’s business.

But in the night the visions increased, and the two ex-soldiers who had survived the Lakht, Malin’s lovers, walked away from the village toward the east, simply walking.

Marak found it out in the morning, when they gathered for a generous breakfast of flatbread and milk. They were two men short, Malin was smug in her collection of bracelets, and those two, once he knew the tale, he could all but feel, walking, walking, walking, waterless and foolish, put out with Malin, having had far too much drink last night, and having perhaps grown fonder of Malin than she of them.

“We should break camp and overtake them,” Marak said. The visions and voices troubled him more by the moment.

“Let them go,” Malin said: she had mistaken popularity for authority, and spoke out her opinions as she pleased.

“We have another day here,” Tofi protested.

“The men will die of thirst out there,” Marak said. He saw the hall and figures, as Norit had said. He saw men walking, and he had lost two men to those visions: Hati had said all visions were the same, and had they not seen what he had been seeing all night? “Unless we break camp now, they’re dead men. They have the visions we have. The calling is east. For once, Kassan and Foragi are right.”

Tofi looked unhappy, but even Maol murmured, “East,” and the look was in their eyes.

So they struck the tents, the slaves both moping through their task, mourning the rich tables of the village, and bundled up the gear a day ahead of their plan. They roused out the beasts, who were no more ready to leave than the slaves, and who put up a great protest of lamenting and moaning. The beasts fled the reach of the slaves, and predictably the whole village of Pori turned out to watch and laugh.

Hati frowned, but Norit thought it fu

The au’it solemnly wrote her account, perched primly on a pile of their baggage awaiting beasts to carry it.

The beasts tired, the slaves put out a great effort, and caught one after another of the rebel animals. They had traded two of the beasts to the lord of Pori, and by refitting the saddles with side poles, made their other excess animals into pack beasts, but those complained about the loading, and hated the poles. It was all a swirl of bawling beasts and complaints and calls for this and that item in the most possible confusion.

The water-au’it meanwhile measured out the flow by which they filled all the waterskins, theirs and those large ones the beasts carried, to the brim. They favored themselves, at the Ila’s charge, with a last, full drink from the sweet water, and the lord of the village, not disparaging madmen who paid well, gave each of them a fresh fruit, even the slaves.

It was a welcome surprise. Tofi was ready, however, and gave the lord a token, one of their fine bronze heating-mirrors, wrapped in soft leather.

“Count this, too, from the Ila,” Marak said in all honesty.

“We look forward to your return,” the lord of Pori said, bowed deeply and cherished the big mirror against his heart.

Would they? Marak asked himself. He had not asked himself that question in their stay here. It was their mission. But would they?

The lord’s wife presented a bundle of dried fruit, which was a fine gift, too, one which Marak did not intend to hoard to himself; but by now he feared he was not as expressive as he wished. Marak, Marak, the voices were saying and in his head he saw the cave of suns and imagined Kassan and Foragi descending rocks, afoot, in danger. In his blood was a fever to be moving he had not felt since the Ila’s hall. Structures of fire shot through his vision, and the sweet-sour taste of the living fruit, dripping with juices, provided its own distraction. He bid farewell with juice-wet fingers and kept the pit in his mouth, too distracted for conversation or wit.