Hammerfall

The slaves below, hindmost, were not helping. “Fools!” Tofi called out, looking back, and risked his life, descending the trail side to hold back one beast until the one ahead had vacated a foothold for it.

They made the crest. They were on the Lakht. Tofi, bedraggled and dusty, came up last. “I said get before them!” Tofi shouted at the slaves. “I said hold the line back! I said be a gateway, not an open door! Shall I free fools? How will you make a living in the world?”

The slaves were chagrined, and hung their heads; but it came to Marak with sudden force that Tofi believed the world would go on, and that he himself went on believing it, at heart… while if Luz was right there would be no continuation, no order of life such as they knew—

If Luz was right. If she was, then Tofi’s promises were a mirage, Tofi’s promises, his beliefs… all mirage, all blind faith. After a rest full of nightmares and visions it came to him like a blow to the heart, and for an instant the question devastated him: How will you make a living in the world?

How would they deal with a changed desert, and this enemy, and Luz’s protection.

What would he say to the Ila if he could reach her?

Is Luz telling the truth? That would be the first thing.

To find his mother and get her into his hands… that was where he was going.

But for what? For what better life?

He sat down on a convenient flat shelf of rock, and tried not to find deeper answers. He had to rest; they all had to rest. The beasts were weak-legged from the climb, and sat down under their burdens. It was no time for prolonged thinking. It could only lead to despair.

“We should pitch the tent,” Tofi came to him to say. “We have plenty of water, no lack of food. The sun is not quite at noon, but it makes sense to stop.”

Did it? Did it, when Luz said it might already be too late to carry their message? Despair and urgency wavered back and forth in his brain like chill and fever, an approaching panic.

There was no reason to lame the beasts or drive themselves to collapse: that was no help to them.

“Pitch the tent,” Marak said, and resolved on less desperate speed and a steady progress for the days ahead. They would reach Pori in the night, and then expect no more diversions until Oburan, not diverting or stopping for any wells, since they still had sufficient water and a wealth of supplies. They were making good time, having cut two days off their trek already.

They had their supper while the burning light of noon came in under the tent edges. They ate well, even extravagantly, and lay down to sleep.

But in early afternoon, Norit sat up, waking both of them with her sharp gasp.

“We should not go to Pori,” she said.

“Not go to Pori,” Hati said in amazement, when it was their chief watering stop on the way to the holy city. Marak was half-asleep, having achieved rest, and cudgeled his brain toward coherent action.

“We should not go there,” Norit said in a whisper, and seemed to look into the distance, at something not evident to them. “When we bring the rest, we need Pori, but not now. Go north.”

Norit was not the one to give them orders. Norit had expressed few opinions, until now. Marak got to one knee and put out a hand and turned her head gently until she did look at him.

“There’s no time,” she said. “We can’t wait. Take the northern trail. Tofi will know.”

When did Norit know any trails on the Lakht? “Luz!” he said, and Norit blinked, and took a deep breath.

“Take my advice,” Norit said as if she were god-on-earth, and with a lift of her chin. She drew her shoulder from under his hand as if he polluted her with his touch.

Hati had laid a hand on her knife, alarmed; but Marak seized Norit’s hand, hard.

“Wake up,” he said, and Norit blinked twice, and looked astonished at herself, on the edge of tears.

“Luz spoke through you,” Hati said.

“I heard,” Norit said, and shivered and ran her fingers into her hair, clenching it, pulling it, self-distraction. “I hear her. I don’t want to hear her.”

“Damn Luz,” he said. “We’ll go on to Pori. Never mind what Luz wants.”

Norit flashed him a look of terror. “No,” Norit said, and pain rushed through him, and through Hati, and through Norit, until pain was all there was, and he was descended to mere creature, wallowing on the ground where he had fallen. Lights flashed in his eyes and pain roared in his ears.

“Listen to advice,” Luz said fiercely in that sound, Norit leaning above him with unwonted fierceness. “It’s already begun! I can’t stop it! Do what I say!”

Pain racked him. He dragged himself up, appalled and angry. He strode out from under the tent, into the sun, and began kicking loose the tent stakes, blindly, even before the slaves had gathered up their goods.

“Wait, wait!” Tofi cried, waving his arms. “What’s wrong with her? What’s wrong with any of you?”

Marak knew his act was as mad as Norit’s. The pain reached his ears and his skull and hammered at him. He spun about, arms wide, looking up at the eye of heaven as if he flew, as if he were bound to nothing but the blue-white air, as if he were caught between the hammer of the sun and the anvil of the earth. He would fling himself down and die before he became utterly mad. He would cast himself off the cliffs before he became a mindless slave to the voices.

“You’ll have nothing!” he shouted at the heavens. “ You’ll have nothing from me!”

The pain in his head became pain in his chest and in his spine and in his gut, and the noise in his ears became a light like the sun. He spun and he spun and he spun until he fell.

He lay on the sun-scorched sand, whole, and unbroken.

Luz said, into his ears: Listen to me. Lives are at risk. It’s already begun. Someone will see to Pori. Go north, away from danger.

Hati dragged his head into her lap, shading him with her body, touching his face with precious water. “Marak. Marak. Wake up. Wake up! Don’t leave us.”

Don’t leave us, don’t leave us, don’t leave us.

“Marak,” Hati said, and fear was in her voice, where fear was a stranger. “Marak, wake up. Do you hear me?”

He could not leave Hati lost. He could not leave Norit possessed of devils, with no one to understand her.

He drew several great breaths and slowly blinked at Hati’s shadowed face, against the sunglare. He saw Norit beyond her shoulder, a plain, sweet, woman’s face dim to his eyes, wild-haired and bareheaded, haloed by the sun.

He reached back with his hands and pushed himself up, gathered a knee under him with Hati’s help and then Tofi’s.

He looked dazedly at Norit, wondering if he was looking at the same time at Luz. But if it was not also Norit within that body, he reasoned, then Norit had no other place to be, and whatever she carried within her, he could not turn on her. He had no power to drive out his own vision. He certainly had no power to condemn hers.

“We will pass by Pori,” he said, to Tofi, to Hati, to whoever cared. In that promise, the pressure in his head eased, and Luz grew silent. Tofi had a frightened look.

He staggered upright, staggered as he walked toward the tent to continue ripping up the stakes, still dizzied by his looking at the sun. He was not accustomed to defeat. He burned from the shame of his actions.

And for what, he asked himself, for what reason?

Tofi yelled at the slaves to help, and lent a hand. Together, with Hati and with Norit, all of them helping, they folded the tent and packed it. They loaded the beasts, and roused them to their feet, ready to move.

“This northern way,” Marak said to Tofi. “Do you know it?”

“There is a shorter way across the highland,” Tofi said. “My father never used it. I can tryto find it.”

Try, in an unforgiving waste. But it seemed to him he knew.