Hammerfall

Them and the priests, he thought.

That was where Norit had gone, to tell the priests, and the priests told everyone, simply, clearly, without distortion or reinterpretation. That was their value to the Ila, and that was their value to Luz.

As rapidly as word could pass, at their noon camp, as rapidly as single priests could walk to the first of the villages, and village priests, and that man to the next, and that next to the village following, word would spread.

“Tell them there’s water at Pori,” he muttered to Luz. “Have her do something useful. It’s not damned useful to scare everyone.”

East, the word came to him. East, east, east, and an overwhelming sense of urgency, but he denied it. The needs of a whole caravan short of water denied it. Pori was the destination.

They camped. They had to, and he had reached the limit of his recovered strength. He sat down until the slaves had the tent ready, and he let Hati unsaddle Osan.

And curiously, without any threat in the heavens, every tent deployed side flaps on every side but that facing their line of march, an arrangement which both gave them deep shade and prevented the air moving as efficiently.

It cut off the view of anyone trying to find a target within the tents.

Norit came back to them, saner than she had left. She sat down under the tent, and Patya gave her Lelie, who was fretful and confused, as what child might not be?

But before their noon meal Norit had Lelie sleeping in her lap, and smoothed Lelie’s fine hair… unthought, repeated gesture.

“Come,” he said to Norit, to Hati. “Lie down. The baby, too.”

They did, their mats set together. Lelie squirmed and fretted, still fevered with her wound, and found a new soft place between Norit and him. Memnanan’s mother and that household sat at one end of the tent, and Tofi and he and his at the other, but when they went out to get their bowls filled at the common pot, with the rest, and came back to sit and eat, they made one circle.

There Lelie, still fretful, injured, discovered willing sympathy in Memnanan’s mother, and left off scratching her healing wound to sit and be coddled on the old lady’s knees. The mother of the Ila’s own exalted captain fed a village waif, and Memnanan’s wife, uncomfortable at every angle, carrying a child of her own, smiled, a transformation of a plain, thin face into a remarkable woman.

Patya and Tofi sat and talked together. Marak lay down with Hati, alone with Hati, at peace for a little time. He wondered at himself at times, that he could go through such a day and suddenly think of making love to his wife. But thinking was as far as it got.

Come to bed, he wished Norit without saying so.

Babies grew and changed so quickly. Perhaps Norit could not figure where the missing weeks had gone. Two months, and three, and the child was not the infant she remembered. None of them had recovered what they had lost. Everything fell through their grasp so quickly.

Fire blazed through his vision. Rings of fire spread outward.

Marak, his voices said, and something else. Lovemaking became impossible.

Damn the Ila, damn Luz, damn the ondat. He saw the structures start to build in his eyes. He shut Luz out, remembering music, remembering voices, remembering the courtyard and the garden, and the old slaves gathering fruit. Go to hell, he said to Luz. Lines became the base of the garden wall. Voices became the sound of water.

The earth trembled, reminding him it was the Lakht, after all, and that hours of sleep were hours of life irrevocably lost.

Chapter Twenty-Two

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The Anlakht is the land of death, but it is also the mother of wells and waters. Fortunate for the world that mountains rise beyond the Qarain and trap the water that rises in the wind. That gift, passing through the hard rock of the Qarain, feeds the wells of the Lakht.

In the same way the Lakht sends water down to the lowlands, turning bitter water into sweet. The unkindest land feeds all the rest. On that one circumstance the whole world lives.

I am the Anlakht of my own creation.

—The Book of the Ila

Stars fell, and multiplied streaks of light across the night sky as they rode through the dunes that night. Some stars vanished beyond the distant wall of the ridge, off the edge of the Lakht. Some sank themselves in cold waves of sand in front of them.

One exploded overhead and left a trail that twisted slowly in the sky.

Marak, Marak, Marak, the voices said constantly, allowing him no rest from warning. Norit rode with Lelie asleep across the saddlebow, and had her eyes shut, listening or seeing visions, but Hati seemed doggedly trying to sleep, head down and arms clenched as she rode.

Over hours, the ridge to the east played out. The sand stretched level as they traveled south. There was the way to the rim, that track they had taken before, avoiding Pori. The night went insane above them, one streak and the next.

East!

The voices suddenly redoubled their efforts, as if the tower had just wakened from sleep and found out where they were.

Marak! East! Now!

Marak bit his lip, and kept going as he had set their course, as he had told the lord of the Keran, who was deaf to voices and blind to visions.

Lelie began to cry, wordless, plagued, perhaps, by prophecy even in her young age.

Norit suddenly reined in her besha and diverted it from the line, obstructing the course of beshti behind them. Tofi and Patya scarcely avoided colliding with her.

Marak rode close and leaned from the saddle, evading the irate snap of the besha’s jaws. He seized the rein and led Norit back, and Norit jerked at the rein and tried to seize control of the beast.

“East,” Norit insisted. “The hammer of heaven. We have to go east.”

“We know it,” Hati said, entirely awake now, and in bad humor. “All of us know it’s coming. But we’re not going east. We haven’t any water. Make Luz understand that. We can’t kill all the villages.”

Lelie kicked and squalled. Patya rode close, far more skilled a rider than Norit, and held out her arms. So also Memnanan’s relatives rode near to offer help, asking what was the matter, while the caravan moved around them, never pausing. Children grew fretful. Families held discussions. It was no one else’s business.

“Give Patya the baby,” Hati said harshly. “Give her to Patya! You’ll drop her if you go on.”

Norit would not. Norit held Lelie and hugged her close, hushing the cries, and the look in her eyes, in the light of a star-streaked heaven, was a hell of fear and desolation.

“It’s not safe.”

“Nothing’s safe,” Marak said. “We’re not safe if half the villages die of thirst.”

Rock hit sphere, over and over. He was blind for the moment, but he jerked the rein from Norit’s hand and the besha, misused, squalled and backed and jerked its head, dragging painfully at his grip, compressing his fingers.

But he held. He kicked Osan and started forward, and the besha, glad, perhaps, tohave a direction compatible with the herd, walked, Norit willing it or not, and Lelie still in her possession.

“We’ll die!” Norit cried. “We have to go east, we have to go over the rim!”

“Shut up!” Hati said. “If you let that baby fall, I’ll hit you!”

Marak paid no attention to the argument, or to Norit. He led, blind with visions that argued Norit’s opinion, and knew when they passed the track that had turned north of Pori the last time they had made this trek. They passed it by.

“We’ll die,” Norit muttered. “No safety there. No safety. No safety.”

“There’ll be water,” Marak said, weary of listening to her, distracted by the vision of the star-fall. “There’ll be water, and we’ll be there by morning. We’ll be straight on to the rim with no more than a camp. It’s the best we can do.”