Hammerfall

“I certainly don’t want to bring her that advisement,” Memnanan said.

Marak was amused. “Then save it for a better moment. But we have to pack the tent. Good luck to you.”

“Long life to you,” Memnanan said dourly, and went back to bear unwelcome news.

The villages behind would doubtless learn, too, at what hour to be up and moving, or lose their priority in line.

Certain individuals, however, had been moving during the rest: a number of priests had found their way up the line, without tents or guides. They simply lay on their mats, and rested outside the Ila’s tent, exhausted, men afoot, traversing the line at need, mostly the Ila’s needs.

Marak regarded them uneasily. Since their chief priest had fallen dead beside the distribution of the au’it’s books, they had no leader, so far as Marak was aware. The priests had waked, too, and were rolling up their mats, with no water, no food, no provision for the desert. And whether they followed the Ila, now, or had some way of consulting their own god for more obscure and divine messages, and immaterial sustenance, he was unwilling to have them underfoot.

More to the point, he was unwilling to have them taking up rations in the Ila’s camp.

Memnanan had come out again. “She will move,” Memnanan said.

“And the priests,” Marak said. “They should fall back and find some village who wants them. What do they intend to drink? Prayers?”

“Prayers,” Memnanan said. “And the Ila’s charity. Like the au’it, they have their uses.”

“And their water needs.” Marak was far less convinced. “They’ll drink up half their weight in water and endanger the Ila. They have to be under someone’s authority.”

“I’ll speak to them,” Memnanan said.

Before they were under way, and before all was said and done, the priests went under the Ila’s remaining awning for an audience: Marak saw them kneeling and bowing and speaking at some length. He wished them to the vermin of the desert: bad enough the several they already had, now there were twice that number, and he wondered how many more of this white-robed lot were loose among the tents of the caravan.

They were parasites, every one of them, in his estimation.

But the Ila called him, next, having dismissed the priests. Her tent remained uncollapsed. Its veils were down. But while the Haga were well toward finishing their packing, the Ila sat on her chair, the only chair in the desert, unless some villagers were equally fool enough to pack furniture instead of food… and sipped tea under the only tent still standing.

Marak went under it and sat down. His au’it went with him and sat, and her au’it sat cross-legged at her feet, with her open book and her pen in hand.

“The captain has told you we should be moving,” Marak said before the Ila said a thing. He made up his mind then and there not to pay abject courtesies or to play the courtier to the Ila’s whims. It would not serve her, him, or the people in their threatened thousands. He measured his retreat, if he had to, and he knew that not all the Ila’s men could or would prevent him and Hati and Norit riding up among the tribes at the lead, ignoring the Ila, and ruling from there. Their lives, and hers, were too precarious.

He did not intend it should come to that. But he did not intend to have the Ila delaying them in daily argument, either. Or to have other appurtenances taking up their supplies.

“The priests,” he said, “are a waste of water. They can pack canvas.”

“The priests will go back to the villages with my word,” the Ila said, likewise in the serenity of absolute power, and joined her gloved hands primly before her lips. “And keep me apprised of matters behind us.—How is your mother?”

“Well enough.”

“I hear you’ve sheltered Memnanan’s wife.”

“A matter of gratitude.” He was cautious. Lives ended, on the Ila’s whim. He might be secure, but others were not.

“And a matter of personal favor,” the Ila said, behind joined fingertips. “Are you corrupting him?”

“He pays youthe favor,” Marak said. “The captain is devoted to you. For me, it’s a personal debt, and I’m paying what I owe him.”

“For what?”

“For not being jealous of me. He might have been, seeing you gave me command of this caravan. But he’s an honest man.”

“I know he is. A hundred have fallen, and Memnanan stands.—Do you still hear your voices?”

“Sometimes.”

“And the fever?”

He was not sure he had ever told her about the fever. Instinct waked instantly and warned him. He was on his guard, in a heartbeat retracing everything he had said, and asked himself again whether the Ila would be fool enough to threaten his life or that of someone near him.

“The fever from the wound?” he asked. “Gone. I’m quite well.”

The Ila regarded him curiously and in silence for a moment. She had protected her white, white skin, even beneath the clouded sky. It was as white as ever. If anyone in the camp washed with water instead of sand, it would be the Ila. The smell of the Beykaskh went about her still, perfume, or incense. Even in the oily, sun-warmed musk of the air under the tent, he smelled it, like a taint of holiness.

“And the wound itself?”

He pushed up his sleeve. The wound was entirely gone, leaving no scar. He had no idea what she thought, having seen that, but she seemed not entirely pleased with the sight. She lifted her hand.

“You may go,” she said, having asked nothing about their destination, their schedule, or their pace.

He gathered himself up and left, with his au’it, who never said a word.

Andhaving escaped the tent and the interview, and saying no word to Memnanan, he gathered up Hati and Norit.

Tofi came over. Beyond them, the Haga were starting their beasts to their feet, ready to move, in the breakup of that last conference.

“I think you can pack the tent now,” Marak said. “Speak to the captain.”

“What did she ask?” Norit asked him, when Tofi went off to do that.

“I asked her about the priests, and she asked me about Memnanan’s wife.”

“Nothing else?”

“The voices, the wound, the fever.”

Norit said nothing, but frowned at the last.

“Why?” he asked her, as they three stood in the dissolution of their camp, the au’it at some distance, writing.

Norit was a moment answering. He had all but given up on her answering at all, no infrequent thing that Norit remained completely absorbed in her musings. But she said, faintly, “The makers.”

“What about the makers?”

“That was her question to you,” Norit said. “About the wound.”

He and Hati looked at her in dismay, silent. It was clearly not Norit speaking to them. It was not Norit who had asked that question, as he had the strong suspicion it had not been Norit for days. “She wished to know about the makers, that was the intent of her question. Whether the strange makers still work in your blood. That’s why she asked you about the fever.”

“She asked whether I’m cured of the madness.”

“Exactly that?”

“Whether I still hear the voices,” he amended it.

“Yes.”

“Did she think not?” he asked. “As if, when we reached Oburan, the madness would just let us go?”

“Perhaps she poisoned you,” Norit said, “with her knife.”

He was appalled, and asked himself had Norit been there to see the attack. She had not. “To test whether Luz’s makers cure poison, too?”

“They can,” Norit’s lips said, while Norit gazed blindly at the horizon. “She knows that.”

“Would she take such a stupid risk?” Hati demanded angrily. “Would she poison the only ones who know the way?”

“It depends on the poison,” Norit said in that same distracted tone.

“What do you mean it depends on the poison?”

“She set hermakers into you. But you still hear the tower’s voice. You still hear me. You still see your visions. She asked about the fever, and you reported it fallen. So she knows her makers were defeated and ceased fighting the makers from the tower. She knows she’s failed.”