Hammerfall

“What, to have hermakers give me voices in my head?”

“I frankly doubt she has that ability. The First Descended had the skill, but not the resources here. We, on the other hand, do. Yes, she tried a small contest against you, and now she knows she’s beaten. Now we can prove to the ondatthat we can defeat her, and we can show them how. It also proves there’s no need for the star-fall, but they won’t stop: they wouldn’t even hear our protestations that we could prevent the need for it. They’re reshaping the world because they have the power, and frankly, too, it’s simply politics. Their people have to see their enemy utterly defeated, ever to feel safe. But she’s beaten, face-to-face and at her best.”

“Because your makers fought a war in me. And they won.”

“With the fever, they won, yes. It’s a very good thing she tried. She’s proven our surmise, that we canovercome her. We’ve also proven it to her, and she’s not happy about it.”

“You mean—” It was probably useless to look at Norit, but he did it instinctively, in outrage. “You mean you invite her into your refuge knowing she has these makersin her, and she’s going to try some other way to get them into all of us.”

“She may try several times. But she’ll lose—again. Oh, make no mistake. This will be a series of battles. She sent you out to us in the first place with makers that didn’t survive… as everyone in the world has her makers in them. She just now tried it again, with a direct effort, with the best she can create, and she’s lost again and her makers lost.”

He found there was a limit to what he wanted to know about this war in which his soul and his body were the battleground.

“You mean she’ll go on doing this, and you’ll try, and she will.”

“I’ve no doubt that she has something yet to try, and will. We’re equally determined it won’t work.”

“An attack on us. In us. Again.”

“I fear so.”

Anger welled up in him, a distracting, overwhelming anger. “You listen to me. Your voices can damned well let me alone when I have something to do. There’s no need to be chattering at me the way you do. You’re sitting in the tower. You can tell your damned voices that while you’re at it. And you can let Norit go! Let her be! She’s not yours!”

“She’s an excellent viewpoint. You’re far too inclined to turn and twist things into what you want to say. And you grow distracted and don’t listen. I need to know where you are.”

“You know damned well where we are! Let her alone! Give her her nights free of you, at least!”

“It’s too important,” Luz said. “I won’t lose all of you just for her comfort.”

“Then talk to mea while!” Hati said.

“You won’t do, any more than he will.”

“Give her some rest!” All this talk of makers fighting makers had disturbed him. He saw nothing to do about that, but Norit’s plight, at least, seemed within their reach, a point on which they could reason with Luz. “You’ll make her sick if you go on at her like this.”

“I’ll let her rest,” Luz said quietly.

Immediately Norit blinked several times and seemed herself again, a little distressed, a little lost, a little confused. Marak put his arms about her, and Hati did, and Norit shivered, and shed tears, then simply sat down on the sand and sobbed.

“Everybody,” Norit kept saying. “Everybody,” but they made no sense of it.

“What can we do?” Hati asked him in dismay.

“I don’t know,” he said. He had no idea now whether it was worse for Norit to be awake and to know what she might know, or whether during those times of Luz’s possession Norit simply took refuge somewhere Luz failed to bother her, and Norit only realized the nature of what had flowed through her once she waked… but whatever Norit saw that they failed to, it seemed terrible. He squatted down and wiped Norit’s tears, and all the while Norit’s tears kept flowing, tears for what she saw in Luz’s visions, tears for what had happened to her, tears simply of exhaustion: he had no idea what caused them.

“Find Lelie,” she said once.

He remembered Norit had shouted that name once, in her greatest distress.

“Please find Lelie for me.”

“Where shall I look?” he asked, but of course it was Tarsa he should search. In those days before their march to the tower, Tarsa was all Norit had ever known.

“Who is Lelie?” he asked, but Norit failed to answer him.

In a moment he got up and exchanged a glance with Hati. “I’m going to try,” he said.

“If this goes on,” Hati said, “she willgo crazy, crazier than we ever were. I think it’s a sister she’s lost. Maybe someone she knows from her village can reason with her.”

When Tofi and his men had packed down the Ila’s tent and when Memnanan and his men had seen the Ila and the au’it mounted and ready, they got up on their own beasts. Norit seemed calmer by then, though whether it was the calm Luz imposed in her reign he had no idea. The Keran had already begun to move, and opened an interval on them.

There must be gaps all along the line of march now, similar disparities in readiness. Some afoot might even turn back after their first or second camp on the road, losing courage for the hardship. He decided he had no wish to know the personal stories of those behind him in the line. He wanted no faces for those that were bound to die, no situations to haunt his sleep and his waking.

But he went to Memnanan and asked the service of one of his men.

“I need someone to ride back and find Tarsa in the line,” he said, “and find someone named Lelie.”

“Why?” Memnanan asked.

“One of Norit’s kin, I think. I don’t know. But I want this Lelie found. It’s a favor.”

He left that statement to lie unadorned between them. There were favors passed, indeed there had been favors passed between them. Without comment, Memnanan called a man over and put him under that instruction.

“Find out who Lelie is, and if there is a Lelie with Tarsa’s company, bring her with you and protect her from all unpleasantness. A member of this lord’s party wants her.”

The man reined aside from the column and rode back alongside it. There was no telling where in the line of march Tarsa might fall: it might be a journey of one or two days.

By morning the man Memnanan had sent had still not come back. By then Marak began to know it was no small favor he had asked, and by afternoon, after their rest, that most likely time for the man to catch up to them, he began to worry about the man, and about the favor he had asked of Memnanan.

He found nothing comfortable to say about the situation, only to shrug apologetically when he met Memnanan and to wish the man safety and a safe return.

“The line is very long,” Memnanan said. “It may take a while.”

But none of them, not even those experienced at reckoning the number of a group by looking at them, knew how long the marching line would be. All methods of measuring failed against the scale of the undertaking, to move everyone in the world to shelter. Marak found himself in Memnanan’s debt, and in debt to the messenger, who had surely had no idea, either, the size of the task when he left.

Morning, too, brought a stiff head wind that kicked up the dust in their faces and made the pitching of tents at noon a far more difficult operation.

Rumor filtered up the line during the rest, one group talking to another next in sequence. A old man had fallen off and broken his leg. A woman of the villages had given birth, and men had carried her on a litter while she did so.

Life in the column went on, no matter its difficulty.

But the messenger had not come back by then, either, and no rumor reported the messenger on his way.

Chapter Eighteen

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If a good well turns to bitter water, the village dies: there is no remedy.