Hammerfall

“It went out his back,” Tofi’s voice said. “That’s good.”

“It could have carried threads into him. Heat some oil.”

Lelie had been shot, an i

Men were still shouting and ru

“She’s shot, too,” Hati said. “Norit. Norit, takeher, damn it. Don’t stand and stare like a fool!”

The baby still cried, more distantly. Pieces of his recollection scattered, like coins across a floor.

“Someone had better unsaddle Osan,” he said. “He’s been under saddle since yesterday. Maybe longer.” He could not remember. “Rub his legs.”

“We’ll see to him,” Hati promised him.

“Is he going to die?” That wail was his sister’s voice. He could not remember why she was there. “Is he going to die?” He tried to answer her for himself, though he could not see her. “No,” he said.

But after that men picked him up by the edges of his robe and carried him into the walled tent, where they had an oil light.

They let him down. He was content simply to breathe. The wind failed to reach here. The noise and the dust was less. He could have sunk into sleep, quite gladly.

But they brought hot oil, and poured it into the wound, repeated doses. He felt other faculties dimming as a fierce throbbing attended the hurt.

“It’s swelling,” someone said. “It won’t take the oil.”

The makers were at work. His makers. His protectors. About the baby he had no idea. He simply lay still, shut his eyes, tried to ride through the pain while they probed and cleaned: he fainted, and came back, and fainted again, but by the second waking there were wet compresses on the wound, and they had given up on the hot oil.

Hati was by him. He found no need to talk. The pain was all, for a while, and he could not organize his thoughts to want or wish anything beyond that. He simply lay still, wondering whether they had delayed for the storm, or for him. He vaguely knew Hati could answer that one question, but he had no wish to open a conversation he could not carry further. He was growing delirious with the fever, and his head hurt worse than any headache in his life. He decided he was willing to die, so long as no one disturbed him or hurt his head. The veins in his temples and in his ears seemed apt to rupture, the pressure was so great, and tears leaked from his burning eyes simply because there was nowhere else for the pressure to go.

The makers might not win this one, he thought, and if that was so, then he urgently had to muster the wherewithal to talk to Hati. There were instructions he had to give.

“We can’t stay camped,” he said, and what he tried to say was: ”The moment the weather allows, we have to move out of here. Something’s coming.“

“I know,” Hati said. “Be still. Sleep.”

“Did you hear me?” he tried to ask. He still heard Lelie crying, and he lost the thread of communication with Hati for a while, but he thought about it while he rested.

Marak, the voices said, and he tried to listen and learn this time. He hoped Luz could reach him, explain to him, understand their situation and get them to safety. He saw dots before his eyes, but it was one of those kind of visions he thought came from fever, not from Luz.

Then the dots, red and blue, mostly, acquired significance, individuality. They moved, and followed patterns. Life depended on them, and they made chains, spiraling like the flight of vermin.

It was surely fever. In a remote part of his mind he knew he was delirious.

Marak, the voices said again. Marak.

And in his dream, “I’m listening,” he said aloud. “Tell me what to do.”

You’ve been foolish, Luz said.

“ I know that,” he said in this dream, but he was mesmerized by the dots, wholly absorbed by them, as if they were the secret to all the world, just revealed to him.

You’re looking at the nanisims, Luz said to him. These are the makers. Are you listening this time?

“ Yes,” he said. “ Help us get out of here.”

They heal you when you’re injured. They’re my creatures, at work now, patching the damage you’ve done.

“ I’ve done. I didn’t do it. My father did.”

Small difference.

“ That’s fine. I’ll get well. Go away. I’m in too much pain to talk.”

The swelling can’t be helped. Your body does that when the nanisims rush to an injury: there are so many they congest the area. They diverge, you know, the makers aren’t the only sort. The makers make other makers, some of them the body’s own nanisims, if you like.

“ If I live I’m sure I’ll appreciate it.”

I’m sure you will, Luz said. Are you hearing me now? It’s rare that I can get your whole attention.

“ I’m trying.”

I’m sure you are. But know this: you carry these nanisims wherever you go, and shed them into the soil and the water. Or into blood. They work very efficiently in the bloodstream.

“ Nice.”

You took it on yourself to bring Norit’s baby. You risked every life in the world for one child.

“ As you did, to get the Ila.” Now he roused almost to consciousness, and for a moment the dots and their movements were not the whole world. “ The baby is Norit’s child. She misses her child. Is that such an offense to you?”

It’s certainly an inconvenience to her. But we have the child now: your blood shed new makers into her, not the old sort, not the sort she had from being in Norit’s body, rather the new ones we gave you at the tower. An unintended gift, and we get very little of sense from her, but she does try.

“ Damn you, let the child alone.”

She’ll heal, thanks to your makers. As you will. And you’ll shed your makers wherever you pass. You constantly shed them into the sand, and beetles take them up… small use, those. But we can direct their structure. You shed them everywhere. You’ve begun what the ondat decreed. Youare that change. You war with the Ila simply by breathing.

Dots built intricate structures, moved, shifted, built towers and strings and divided. Some beat like imprisoned birds, only fast, far, far faster. Some turned and shed pieces of themselves. It became incredibly sinister, the activity of those moving forms.

Big eaters eat little eaters and on they go, our makers, the Ila’s makers. They carry on warfare, and that war spreads wherever you go, and they change what they touch. If the Ila offers a man a cup of water, these nanoceles, these makers, go with that touch.

If a man goes back to his village and sleeps with his wife, so the makers will spread, and spread when she prepares a meal, or goes to the well, or kisses her child. All through the world, these makers renew themselves and become newer kinds.

And all these things the Ila does, because she contains her master makers. As you contain mine. And mine are essential. You have to live.

“ That’s comforting to know.”

You have to live. Tain has become my enemy and her friend.