Hammerfall

He fell back, dizzied, beset by contrary voices, having lost all capacity to argue with Aigyan: but no matter the Ila’s whims, no matter the priests, no matter Luz’s will, he had delivered their chief guide his direction, and meant it. The au’it who had followed him up in the ranks followed his retreat, struggling to rein back her besha, which wanted to follow the others. But he simply rode slower and slower, let beshti pass him, one after another, until finally he found Norit and Hati.

By now Patya was riding beside them, doubtless wondering whether he had gone mad again.

“What did the Ila want?” Hati asked him. “And what did Aigyan just have to do with it?”

“A courtesy, in both cases. They wanted to know how great a fool I mean to be after this. But I can’t offend Menditak, either. I’ll be back.” He threw a look at his sister Patya. “Stay with them. Keep where Hati and Norit can see you, at all times, hear me? If our father lays hands on you…”

“You’re the crazy one!” Patya shot back. “Be careful!”

“You’re right,” he said, while the au’it wrote, mercilessly recording, making casual utterance into lasting record. “I won’t do it again. And don’t you be as crazy. Hear?” He remembered what Patya could not: his mother’s worry when Patya was born a daughter; Tain sulking and drinking all night and breaking crockery because he had a daughter and not a second son.

He remembered things Patya might remember, too, Patya very early lamenting to him she was not born a boy. She was the one in the family without illusions. She was the sane one, and knew their father failed to love her. These things the au’it could not write. Not even Hati knew the pain that Tain had inflicted, long before he murdered Kaptai.

“There’s four of us of the household, now,” Marak said, lingering by Patya, deafening himself to the voices. “Tain’s not our father anymore. Hati and Norit are your sisters. That baby’s Lelie, and her father didn’t want her. I’m not sure Norit does, when she’s crazy. Help her.”

Patya’s eyes still carried shadows of Kaptai’s death and Tain’s hate. But there was courage in her. There always had been, a finer, steadier courage than his. “I’m fine,” Patya said, pressing her lips to a thin line. “I’ll get myself a husband. If a rock from the sky doesn’t fall on us. I’ll marry you some help.”

“I havehelp enough,” he said. “Marry for love. Bring some peace to the house. That’s what I want. And stay to the center of the camp. Don’t go on the outside edge, and I promise you won’t.” They both had to fear every night and every day from now on that their own father might be aiming at her life or his, or at anyone Tain thought they cared for. He put it in words, and knew that somewhere the feud had to have a bloody ending.

But not today. Not this moment. Marak, Marak, his voices nagged him, and east, east, east, when life and water lay south. Luz would make him crazier and crazier. She would drive Norit, and Hati, who must hear the same urge, and find it harder and harder to resist—off a cliff, no less. He would nothave Luz dictating Patya’s life. Patya was always and forever the sane one.

“Stay with Hati,” he said. “I’ll be back before we camp. I’m not going anywhere near the edge. Hati?”

Hati paid sharp attention.

“Water,” he said. “Water, at Pori, before everything.”

“Something’s going to happen,” Hati said, and Norit, with no sanity at all in her eyes: “There’s no time, Marak.”

“The hell.” He reined Osan back a second time, with the au’it lagging back after him. He let them slip farther and farther back, past the Ila’s pack train, and all the Ila’s servants, city-bred men and women wrapped in white, under the fierce, bright sun. Marak, the voices said, and the rock hit the sphere, vividly, persistently. Luz was increasingly upset with him.

“I understand you,” he said to Luz under his breath. “And you want the damned books, don’t you? Every village that dies, you’re losing a book.”

The vision came again, repeatedly, blinding him. He rubbed his eyes, coming among the Haga, among the most familiar of tribes.

He found Menditak, and Menditak went veiled in the aifad, withdrawn, in mourning or in anger: it was impossible to read. Dust was on Menditak’s shoulders. That, too, was mourning, for Kaptai, for four good men—he had no clear idea who those men might be, whether uncles of his, or close to Menditak. There was a debt here, and he had come riding in unveiled, mad, distracted by visions.

“Omi,” he said to Menditak, raking his sanity into one coherent heap. “I had to come back. I risked the caravan to keep chasing him. But I haven’t given up, either. I’ve carried my report to the Ila and to the Keran, forward: but you, omi, youare my father. I haven’t any other.”

“Tain Trin Tain will die,” Menditak said, from behind the veil. “Word is out, against him.”

“The Rhonan joined us,” Marak said, that usthat meant the tribe. “Certain of the villages have helped me, against him. He’s lost. He won’t be welcome where we’re going. We’ll come to water at Pori, and we’ll go on over the rim, and if he stays on the Lakht, he’ll die. If he comes in reach of us, he’ll die. He has no choice, omi. He won’t get anything from me.”

“He’ll die,” Menditak said again, and asked carefully what Aigyan had said, and about the Rhonan, and their lord, and all the while Menditak’s son was nearby, listening to everything, as the au’it wrote, and for the same purpose.

“I don’t know about your paradise,” Menditak said. “That water thief Aigyan moved in when we did, and insists he’s leading. It’s no time for a fight. The whore in camp bathes in water while honest mothers run short of drink. But we wait, Marak an Haga. We wait. Tell that to the Ila. There will be this paradise of yours.”

“Before that, there’s Pori,” Marak said, and the voices in his head put up an argument that made his temples ache. “You’ll live, and Tain won’t.” He could not muster courtesies, could not track the convolutions of tribal custom. He simply rode ahead, suddenly, his hands doing one thing, his mind distracted in visions and a whispering in his head that would not be still.

He rode through the ranks. Norit met him, on her way back.

“ It’s coming,” Norit said to him. “It’s coming. There’s no stopping it.”

It was the sort of thing Norit raved about. “Where’s the baby?” he asked harshly, trying to call her and him alike back to common sense. “Where’s Lelie?”

He only confused her. Norit rode back through the line, shouting that the hammer of heaven was coming, terrifying the Ila’s servants.

He rode forward, up to where Hati was, where Patya rode, carrying Lelie on her saddle. “Did Norit find you?” Hati asked, and looked back behind him, but Norit was not in sight.

The au’it wrote that, too, it might be.

“Shall I go after her?”

“I know where she is,” he said. It was impossible for them to lose track of one another. The moment he wondered, he knew, and Hati seemed to, the same.

“So do I,” Hati said. “She doesn’t care about her daughter. Norit wants to, but Luz doesn’t. Patya said she’d take care of her. Or Lensa will.” That was Memnanan’s mother, who rode with Memnanan’s wife, Elagan: Laga, they called Elagan, a stronger woman than seemed likely, all belly, now, and very small limbs… endured the ride, simply endured, day after day, smiling sometimes, bravely—while Memnanan’s allegiance had to be elsewhere given, and while she grew closer and closer to her time. Lensa will. Lensa and the aunts, frail and one sickly, had enough on their hands, and he had brought Lelie back to be an inconvenience to everyone… to fight Luz for Norit’s sanity, and now Norit went raving back along the line, wearing her besha’s strength down, frightening anyone who would listen to her, among the Ila’s servants and among the tribes, that being all she could reach.