Hammerfall

“You need not inform mewhere the springs are,” the Ila said in all hauteur. “I’m aware of Pori.”

“We’re on schedule,” he said. “More or less. Some villages may have drunk more than they ought. They’re not experienced in the Lakht. But what can we do, but shorten our own supply?” He spoke to the woman who had her baths, daily, whose daily tea delayed the column. “Luxury for one may be life and death for a village, Ila.”

“Luxury, you say.”

“I say go unwashed, Ila! It’s not that long to water. A little dust is bearable.”

A flutter of red fingers. “Is it bearable for you?”

“And for all of us, Ila. Give up your noon tea. Make somesacrifice!”

“To what end? Will it bring water to the hindmost? Will you ride back and carry it there? Leave it for the vermin? Oh, I know your villages. Some may take to robbing their neighbors, and Tain Trin Tain is back there fomenting trouble. Certain villages have decided to squabble, when even the unlettered tribesband together to defend us.”

“And the tribes will not respect a leader who washes her body in water people might drink,” he retorted. “There’s the truth for you, Ila.”

“And do they respect a man who leaves off guiding the caravan on a whim and a fit of anger?”

“My wives know the way,” he said. “They know it. We were never lost. Trust Norit, if no one.”

“Trust Luz,” the Ila scoffed. “Trust the all-seeing Luz, who prepares a shelter for us, who mediates for the ondatand liesto them. Tell me why you should live.”

It came to him like one of his visions, a dizzying perspective that came so clearly, so absolutely: he ought to fear the threat and failed to, utterly.

“Because, Ila, no one else serves you and Luz at the same time and very few tell you the truth. You know and I know that I could have led the people away from you days ago and left you to travel at odds with the tribes; you know I could have left that very first day with my own tent and a handful of friends—but I didn’t do that. I didn’t do it because youhave importance to the world, and what do I know else? Only what Luz tells me, and I don’t think that’s enough to go through the rest of our lives with—so I want you to get there alive. I want you and Luz both to settle the ondatand save what’s left of us. So I stay and I tell you the truth. Stop taking baths with our water and pay attention to what the tribes tell you and, most of all, win their loyalty, Ila!—which you damned well won’t do by bathing in the drinking water. Win theirloyalty, since you created us, and bethe god on earth. Youknow us as our mother andour god. Youmade the makers that made this world, and apart from you we can’t hope to know who we are and what’s right and wrong for us to do. Call in the au’it if you want to know the secrets I tell my wives, and have Memnanan shoot me dead if you think I threaten your life or your authority. But I think I support it. I think you wantsomeone to say what I say, and tell you the unpleasant truth, or you wouldn’t call me in to talk to me. You’re not mad, and I’m not mad. We’re both terribly, unhealthily sane, and we’re going to go on living, because we haveno illusions and shooting us doesn’t kill us, does it?”

There was a lengthy silence, and the red gauze veil obscured the nuances of her expression. He saw her in profile, considering all he had said.

“Oh, we have a great many illusions,” she said. “We shape them and make them, and now one of them has risen up to call himself my equal.”

“Equal to you and to Luz,” he said. He was utterly reckless at the moment, whether Luz possessed him or whether it was his dive toward death and back, but he saw all life hanging by a thread, and tired of this woman threatening it. “Because without me, and without Hati, you and she would sit still, and most of the world would die. You don’t know how to be loved. I can tell you: save these people’s lives. Do something with your makers, if you can do it: make them strong enough to get to the tower, and then what you and Luz do with each other is your affair. Until we get there, it’s mine.”

“Marak,” Memnanan said quietly, a late, a desperate warning. “Be still.”

“Dare you order him be still?” the Ila asked. “Dare you?”

“He’s our guide, Ila. We need to keep him safe.”

“Then see to it he doesn’t leave,” the Ila said sharply. “See to it he’s not twice a fool.”

“I will,” Memnanan said.

“Tain knows which tent is mine,” Marak said, seeing dismissal coming. “He was lying in wait. That means he’s watching. He knows the layout of this camp, and that means he knows which is your tent.” He saw he had the Ila’s attention a second time. He knew he would have Memnanan’s. “Tain may be near there to this hour, likely stalking us and wondering what he can do about the Haga and the Keran moving in to guard you. If the men with him are sensible, they’ve seen the tribes in this camp and they know—”

“I’m not a fool!”

“Then you’ll listen to advice.”

“How many men do youthink he has?”

“Twenty, perhaps, perhaps more. He rarely likes to move with more. How many may be loyal to him… reliably so… perhaps a hundred. I doubt he’ll gain more who have the strength to ride with him.”

“Do you know their names?”

Suddenly, knowing the Ila’s ruthlessness, he knew what direction this was going. And refused it. “Folly to go back there and deal with them. Make one mistake, onei

“Captain!”

“Ila,” Memnanan said, as au’it all around them wrote zealously.

“Hear me instruct him! Don’t ride out again, Marak Trin Tain. You will not leave this camp without my direct permission. Write it!”

“I don’t intend to,” Marak said. “Unless I see an immediate way to end the threat to the Ila.”

“Did I say not? I think I said not!”

“He would have shot you instead of me, if he could get so far into the camp and be sure of getting out again! He’s not a fool. He wants to rule, not die. I’m not sure youcare which.”

“Marak,” Memnanan said again.

“No, let him say what he wishes. And let him hear! I saved the lives of everyone alive in the world. I’ve preserved the lives of their children’s children, and for my comfort and long life, it was a sensible transaction. Now after all this time, it seems I offend enemies I never met, that Inever fought. Luz blames methat these enemies rain destruction down on the world. Tain Trin Tain blames me that I take tax. Yet a farmer comes to me if a windstorm flattens his fields and say, ‘Ila, we have no food.’ And what should I say? We have no warehouses? Will Luz have warehouses? And wherein is shevirtuous, above me? Wherein is Tain, and what will he do for the world, in my place?”

“I can’t talk about Tain,” he said in a faint voice. “I don’t understand Luz. I only know where water is, and where safety is. That’s allI know, but it makes me your match, out here. Once I’ve gotten you to Luz, my job is ended, and I lose all importance. It’s my greatest ambition, to lose all importance.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“What is, then?”

“To escape alive,” the Ila said. “How dear will you hold that ambition, in a hundred, in two hundred, in three hundred years? How dear will you hold it, when you’ve watched the whole world die, twice and three times? And how tempted will you be, to eliminate the fumbling and the foolishness and the damnable wasteof stupid creatures that repeat the same mistakes and die and feed the next generation of makers, and the next and the next and the next after that… I provoke you and you do nothing! I tread on you and you bleat that you need me! I save your world for you and you never learn! Do you want my power? Take it, and you’llbathe in the drinking water in half my life span.”