Hammerfall

“Ian,” someone said, behind them.

Marak stopped; they all stopped, and turned.

A woman stood behind them, in the same sand-colored robes.

“Is this Marak?” she asked, and an unanticipated flood of heat rushed through Marak’s head, filling his face, his neck, his whole body with fever warmth. His pulse hammered in his temples, for no reason, none. The heat came from inside him, but what caused it was here, this place, this woman.

Marak, the voices said, echoed in his head, Marak Trin Tain, Hati Makri an'i Keran, Norit Tath, and a nameless au’it belonging to the Ila.

The words went round and round and echoed from up above the suns.

All at once the hall went blank. The hard glass floor met Marak’s right knee. Norit and then Hati tumbled past his arms, and he tried to save them from the hard floor. They tumbled through his hands. Numb, he reached for his knife—toppled, simply toppled, hit the cold glassy floor with his shoulder and then with his head.

This was foolish, he thought in dismay. He had fallen over like a child that had forgotten how to walk. There was no cause for this weakness. Nothing had happened to him. There was no pain. He should not have fallen.

Marak, Marak, Marak, the voices said. Visions poured through his head. Voices numbed his ears with nonsense, roaring like the storm wind.

Of course he had weapons. Following Ian, coming in here, he had had at least that confidence.

But he knew now he had carried his defeat inside him, the same enslavement that had drawn him across the desert.

His father won this argument. Worthless, his father had said, and the suns burned and blinded his eyes, each with a curious white-hot pattern at its heart.

“Marak,” Ian said, and reached down a hand. He could no longer move. In jagged red lines the visions built towers, then letters beneath them, but he could make no sense of them. The letters streamed into the dark of the towers, and down twisting corridors, deep, and deeper and deeper by the moment.

“Fool,” his father said.

He had fallen at practice, in the dust of the courtyard. If he did not get up, his father would hit him. He tried. He kept trying.

Chapter Ten

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All metal belongs to the Ila. When it is broken its reshaping must be written down and its weight accounted, whether it be iron or silver or gold or copper. All metal the Ila gives for the good of villages. The earth will not grow it. It will not spring up like water. If a village or a tribe finds any metal, they must make it known to a priest. If it is traded, an au’it must write it. If it is sold, an au’it must write it. If it is lost in a well, that well must be drained. So also if it is lost in sand or carried off by a beast, an au’it must write it, and it must be hunted out.

—The Book of Oburan

Fever burned in marak’s skin, ran in veins of fire through his body. His bones ached. Strange smells assaulted his nostrils. The place reeked like the lye pits, or a ta

He lay in a bed of sorts, unable to move his arms. “Hati,” he said, and then, scrupulously, dutifully, to be fair: “Norit?”

He had no sense of living presence near him. He wondered where they were.

He wondered where hewas.

Very faintly and remote from his immediate concern, too, he thought of the au’it, and the rest of the madmen the Ila had sent with him, at his word.

He thought of Tofi, who had lost everything on this journey. Of Malin and Kassan and Foragi, the fools who had walked into the desert.

A man in sand-colored robes had lured him from the safety of a camp where he at least had allies. He had been a fool to leave, and a greater fool to walk into the tower. He had thought so much of following the vision at the last he had forgotten good sense.

Mad, Tain had said. Not my son. Not my blood. Living in my house, taking my food.

When he failed Tain’s expectations Tain had had no love for him. But when he exceeded them he had Tain’s bitter jealousy. The army had cheered for him, and Tain had sulked in his tent, full of resentment.

Was there nowhere any right course?

He saw his sister sitting in the dust, his mother falling behind, left sonless.

He saw the faces of his father’s men, all staring, all grim and betraying nothing while Tain accused him. Not my son.

After an interval he heard footsteps moving around him. He smelled strange, pungent things. The roaring in his ears built and built to a sickening headache.

Perhaps he was dying. The possibility failed to alarm him. There was no particular pain, except the headache, and he had had no few of those in his life.

But if he was dying, it was without answers, and thatwas not fair.

If he was dying, he had led Hati and Norit here, and they needed him awake, not lying here half-witted. Their absence was a grievance and a worry, and when he thought of them, that worry increased and the headache became less.

“Hati,” he said aloud, and tried to move.

Voices spoke to him, or around him. He felt small, vexing pains. He grew ill with the smells, and he grew angrier and angrier at his helplessness. If he fought, he could open his eyes. If he fought, he could think. If he fought, he could remember why he was here and where Hati had gone.

The voices went away. There was utter quiet for a time. It was hard to maintain the struggle. It slipped away from him, just slipped away.

And with no sense of co

He lay under a light cover, on a bed that stank of lye or some such thing, under a glowing sun that lit the whole room, and he had not a stitch on.

He sat up, on cloth fine and smooth as any he had ever felt, and as clean to look at, though it stank. He was clean, he was shaven, his hair was washed and reeked of alcohol and lye. The sunburn on his hands and the new blisters on his feet had diminished to a little peeling skin, and that told him, given the way he healed, that it had been more than a few hours he had lain here, and that the dark dream might be no dream at all.

He swung his legs off the bed.

Sand-colored clothing lay on a shining metal chair at the foot of the bed. It made him remember Ian and the guidance that had brought him here.

“Ian!” he shouted out, damning him for his betrayal. “Ian!”

He expected no response. He doubted Ian would want to be near him at the moment.

But if the clothes were here, they were surely for him, who had none, and they were cleaner than the rest, smelling at least of nothing worse than herbs.

He put on the breeches and shirt and belt, sat down to put on the boots… in every particular like the boots he had come in, but new, as if they had been re-created down to the last stitch.

He hesitated at the gauzy robe, robes indicating tribe and tribe indicating allegiance; but he was not accustomed to go about in half undress, either; and when he picked it up, he saw how a shoulder stitch of strong twill bound the layers into a garment that could be shrugged on with its folds in place.

The aifad, too, was doubled gauze. He had no doubt how to put it up and wrap it if he chose. Clever, he thought, more than clever. He let the aifad lie on his shoulders, seeing no need of its protection in this sterile place.

Fine cloth, strange smells, burning lights… it was not sun that shone through the ceiling. It had several sources behind the translucent panels. This windowless smooth box of a room was beyond doubt a part of the cave of suns, within the tower. He was not far from where he had fallen and not far, he hoped, from Hati and Norit… not forgetting the au’it, either, who was little suited to indignities like this.