Hammerfall

That door opened without warning. Ian was behind it.

“Are you looking for the door?” Ian asked. “Follow me.”

It was not a welcome presence. But Ian led them to the next door, and touched it to make it open.

Outside was the world and the sunlight, a pale blue sky, and red dunes and sandstone, going on forever.

Outside was a camp of white tents at the foot of the glass-strewn hill on which the tower stood.

Marak paid no attention to Ian as they left, and Ian said no further word to them. Marak heard the door shut behind them, and he felt the hot familiar wind in their faces as they walked down to the tents, faster and faster, with mounting desire to be there, and not at the tower.

“It’s Tofi,” Marak said. He knew the beasts that sat comfortably by those strange white tents: he knew the baggage piled up there. Two tents were pitched, white and looking as if they could have nothing to do with the red rock and the dust.

And from under those open-sided tents the mad came out to welcome them, all the madmen clothed in gauze robes the same as they were, waving, happy, cheering their safe return.

“Malin,” Hati said in astonishment as they came down the hill. “That’s Malin.” Kassan and Foragi were there, too, the ex-soldiers. They had made it here, against all expectation.

Tofi came, ru

“They said you were well,” Tofi said, as they met and clasped hands. “But I said they should let you go. This strange man came to us. There’s plenty of water here, and people, people from all over…”

The others clustered around them as they came downhill. “Where have you been?” the questions ran. “What have you seen?”

“Lights,” Marak found to say to them. “A woman.” There were the new visions, andif the other madmen shared them there was no hint of it. The faces were happy, and their enthusiasm carried them along, all talking at once.

“We have these clothes, and no end of food and water.”

“We can wash. We can even wash in it.”

“And fruits,” the orchardman put in, “with not a blemish on them.”

“The tents cool the air,” the stonemason said. “This is the god’s paradise.”

They went down among those tents, in this babble of strangers and new clothes, and out from the shade under the white tents flowed an u

Wealth and water had poured out on the madmen, the rejected of the world. Theirvisions had brought them only good, that Marak saw. He looked back and up at the foot of the tower, which was so large, and which to his own observation held only Ian and Luz.

So much wealth to give away.

Paradise, the stonemason said.

But was it? Where was the orchard to provide this? There must be far more to all that tower than they had been allowed to see. There must be answers they had never had, questions they had not had the least idea how to ask.

And there were the visions, and the explanations that roused more questions. Death, was Luz’s message.

“They gave us food and water at no cost,” Tofi exalted their hosts, “and these clothes, and as much food as we want, they give. Eat. Take anything.” Tofi took bread from the table to show them. “Whatever we eat, they give us more. It never spoils. No vermin come here.”

“How many of these strangers have you seen?” he asked Tofi.

“That bring the food and visit us? People like us. They come from all over, from Pori, too, and from the tribes. Malin and Kassan and Foragi are here, did you see them? They don’t remember how they found this place. They waked up here, under a white tent.”

All the mad. All those that wandered away from the villages, fed, and clothed, and kept in safety—if they survived the desert.

He was overwhelmed, surfeited with this babble of good fortune.

Hati and Norit were beset with questions and details of the wealth here, the au’it sat down and opened her book to record these wonders, and in a sudden need for escape, Marak walked out into the heat of the sun, where their beasts sat, well fed and supplied, by a pool of water that had no right to be where it was.

The sun warmed his shoulders. He walked where a multitude of feet had tracked the sand, and he climbed the sandstone slant to gain a vantage and a breath of the world’s own sun-heated wind.

He had to ask himself and his demons what he ought to do with Luz’s warning, what was truth, what was safe, what was a mirage that killed the fools that believed it… that was what he sought, simple solitude, on the safety of an often-used trail.

But as he climbed he saw a gleam of white, and a wider and a wider gleam, the other side of the rise on which the tower sat. A city of white canvas spread across the sand.

White tents. Shelter. People. A green-bordered river of water, shaded by palms.

He sat down. He did not even remember doing it. He simply sat and stared at that sight with shock spreading through him like the cold out of the tents.

Steps sounded behind them, so ordinary he failed to question them. Hati came and sat down, and after that Norit, and then the au’it, too, came and sat down by him. None of them spoke for a long time, looking at that sight, that clear evidence that Luz at least had told a part of the truth.

He could not leave this vision untested. He got up and began walking down the slant of the sand that rose up against the sandstone, down a well-trodden path that led him down to the level of those orderly white tents. Hati followed, and Norit and the au’it trailed them both, all the way to the edge of the encampment, where a green-banked pool stood. Beshti wandered at liberty at some distance around the pool, halterless, seeming to belong to no one. Children ran and played, and splashed in the water.

The children stopped and stared. In their gift-robes, they looked like everyone else in sight, but the au’it with them did not. When they walked by and into the rows of tents, people stopped their work and stared.

The people were like the people of any village. There was a potter at work, a weaver. There were all these ordinary activities.

“Where are you from?” Marak asked a potter, and with a clay-caked hand the potter indicated himself and several adults around him.

“From La Oshai,” the potter said with an anxious glance at the au’it. It was a village in the northwest. “My wife is from Elgi.” That was on the western edge of the Lakht. “We met here. Where are you from?”

“Kais Tain,” Marak said. He walked farther, with Hati and Norit, and the au’it trailing them. He asked names. He asked origins. The whole place was a mingling, and as far as he could tell it went on and on.

“The hammer will fall,” one weaver said suddenly, after naming his village. “This is the only safe place. This is the only place.”

“Are you happy here?” Norit asked, and the man’s overly anxious smile faded.

“I wish my wife would come. I wish I could go out there and tell her.”

“Can’t you?” Marak asked.

“I don’t know the way,” the man said.

It was the only unhappiness they had met face-to-face; and it was too painful, and brought back what Luz had said, that everyone who was not here would be under attack, and no one could save them.

Marak turned and walked away, out under the heat of the sun, and walked back to the pool and up toward the ridge, Hati and Norit and the au’it in his tracks.

He had become a void, a sheet of sand on which nothing at all was written.

The unfortunate man down among the tents, a weaver, had no idea of directions. Perhaps he had followed a vision to get here. He had none to take him home to his wife.