Hammerfall

“The Ila knows about the healing, doesn’t she?” Hati asked.

“I think she does know,” he said. Above the tent he heard the thunder, and heard the distant shift of uneasy stone in the ruins. He was too weary to make love. He thought that Hati was, too. They simply looked at one another until Hati’s eyes began to drift shut, and then did close.

He lay very, very still, for Hati’s sake, despite the muttering of heaven and earth, and had one lengthy sleep toward what he thought must be dawn.

Then men-servants came in and provided them clothes, and brought them dried fruit and fresh bread, with butter… butter, which was a rare treat.

Memnanan came next. “Marak Trin,” he said. “Come. The Ila wishes to speak to you.”

Hati was immediately concerned, and was a move away from getting up to go with him, but Memnanan had a word for her, too. “Stay here. He will be safer if you do.”

Hati sank back down and cast him a look as if to ask if he thought that was the truth.

“Do as the captain asks,” Marak said.

Chapter Fifteen

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It is the Ila’s will that the abjori should exist, and at her pleasure and on a day to come, they will cease to exist: for this hour they are the trial of her people, gathering all her enemies together so that everyone may know them.

—The Book of the Ila’s Au’it

Memnanan brought him alone through the maze of veils, stopped him in a narrow space, and nudged his arm to gain his attention.

“The Ila spent the entire night with the au’it,” Memnanan said. “Watch yourself. Rein back that temper of yours. This time it won’t serve you, or the women.”

“Why do you warn me?” Marak asked, trying to catch the man eye to eye. “You being the Ila’s man, why should you warn me?”

“Would you come this far, through so much, to tell her a lie?”

It was the plain truth, he discovered of himself. He was not set on the Ila’s destruction.

Then what don’t you believe? he wanted to ask Memnanan, seeing Memnanan believed him that far. What don’t you believe, and what doesn’t she?

But Memnanan wasthe Ila’s man.

“Come with me,” Memnanan said, and led him through the last three curtains, where the Ila sat as she had sat last night, with the au’it by her. Another au’it—who might be theirs—sat nearby, on a carpet at the side of the chamber. Lamps still burned here, hung on golden chains, but with the leaden light seeping through the canvas the lamps seemed less bright than last night.

“Well,” the Ila said. “Well.” She held out her red-gloved hand and beckoned him. “Come,” she said. ”Show me your arm this morning.“

Marak came close enough and pushed up his sleeve, no more surprised than she to find it only pink flesh.

“So,” the Ila said.

“I heal well,” he said, letting fall his loose sleeve. ”I always have.“

“So again,” the Ila said. “And do you understand the makers, as this Luz calls them? The nanoceles?”

“No. I don’t, at all.”

“Falling stars,” the Ila scoffed. He was accustomed to shame, regarding the visions. But these were no visions. He had seen the pits where they fell, and he would not be dissuaded.

“There are,” he said.

“So this Luzhas appointed herself our savior. Our god. And wants me to go to her.”

“She wants everyone.”

“Oh, doubtless she does! You’re stillmad,” the Ila said. “Have you looked about this tent? Do you see the size of this encampment? And you’ll lead us all to the edge of the Lakht?”

It was a question, a very terrible question. And the au’it wrote it in their books.

“If we have to do it, we have to do it,” Marak said quietly. “These encamped are the villages. They have their harvest tents, and beshti enough to get here. There are the tribes, who know how to get anywhere they choose to go. All I have to do is tell them ‘beyond Pori’, and they’ll know.”

“And will this Luzstop the fall of stars?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think she can.” That sort of honesty was his besetting fault. It had gotten him his father’s chastisement a hundred times before he could learn prudence. But he plunged ahead. “I don’t know what she can and can’t do. Or what you can. She’s a stranger. I came to ask you, can youstop this?”

Perhaps no one had ever asked the Ila to do something impossible for her. She frowned at him, frowned long and hard.

“Such faith.”

“I don’t have faith,” he said. “I don’t trust strangers.”

“Or me.”

“At least you’re not a stranger.”

“So she wants me to come there. For what?”

It was the foremost question, and he could not answer that.

“If we stay here,” the Ila said, and in that little time the earth shivered and shook, so that the au’it gripped their books tightly as they wrote. “If we stay here, we will die. Do you believe that?”

“I know that for a truth,” he said, trying to gather his wits, beset by her and the restless earth. “I know the wayto the tower beyond Pori.” It struck him that the Ila had senthim to Pori, not to the west, not to the north, not to the south, but specifically to Pori. She knew where the tower was. She had known before she sent him.

How much else had she known before she sent him?

“And you can guide us,” the Ila said.

“If I can’t, I have Norit.”

“ Youhave Norit,” the Ila scoffed. “ Luzhas Norit.”

“When Luz is done with her,” he said, “she’s my wife.”

“Your wife!”

“Norit has no part in what Luz does.”

“Have you?” the Ila asked him sharply. “Have you any part in what Luz does?”

He asked himself. And shook his head. “No.” He added, because it was the absolute truth, “I don’t trustLuz.”

The Ila lifted her chin, looked down at him with hard and suspicious eyes. “Do you trust me more?”

“ Younever offered me anything.”

The Ila made a bridge of her gloved hands. “Oh, but I did.”

He shook his head, denying it. “I asked a favor of you, and you agreed. You never offered me anything.”

“So I sent you out,” the Ila said, “a man who eluded my patrols for three years, and this Luztook you up as quick as seeing you. Or quicker. She knew who you were. I doubt she had to listen to rumor to know you for the great Marak Trin Tain. You are her prize among the mad. What did she offer you?”

“What she offers everyone. Paradise. Paradise in white tents beside a green river.” That image came back to him, but the more urgent visions were of disaster. “That was before the stars fell. I have no idea what’s become of that place now. I think it’s still safe. I think Norit would act differently if anything happened to her. Luz hasn’t left her but moments at a time, all through our journey. ”

The Ila’s lips rested against those bridged fingers. Her eyes burned, dark and deep.

“I have your mother, Marak Trin, and your sister. And your father.”

So. He had steeled himself against caring. Against anything that could be a weapon in her hands.

“So you promised,” he answered quietly. And suspected everything she said, every motive in her heart. “So I kept my promise to you.”

“Virtuous of us.”

She prodded at him, wanting an answer. He could think of none. He simply kept still.

“Suppose I said to lead all these people to the tower, Marak Trin. What would you do? How would you manage it?”

He drew a deep breath, a fleeting chance to think of first things, and second. “Do you want me to answer in specific?”

“Do.”

“First, put in charge of each unit those who led them here. If a unit has beasts, they keep them. If they have tents, they keep them. If they have waterskins, they keep them. It’s only fair. They have foresight. It makes them the likelier to live. Have the order of march and camp understood. Set the tribes to the fore: they would move quickest. Whoever moves slowest, falls behind, and who falls behind… there’s nothing anyone can do. They’ll die.”