But Hati… he was sure it was Hati… flung arms about them both, so Norit stayed, shivering and holding him fiercely.
He had no intention of forcing himself on an honest wife. He comforted her with a one-armed though naked embrace, and found her shoulder, as he thought, half-clothed, too. He did not know who was to blame, Hati or Norit, but the leg that lay across him was bare, and then one arrived from the other side, tangled with cloth. Bare breasts too ample to be Hati’s moved against his skin and pressed urgently.
More than one woman was not his custom. But it was Hati’s custom, the custom of the an’i Keran, and whether she shoved Norit at him, or whether Norit had her own plan, Norit’s clothes went the way of the others.
If Norit spoke, he could not hear it, but Norit’s body moved about him. Her demands were, in her way, as fierce as Hati’s. He thought to make his hands and his lips her satisfaction… so he thought, but the hot wind battering against the tent and the twisting fever-warmth of bodies set the whole night to throbbing. The fever was on him, as it came on him after wounds. He found his way into her body, or perhaps into Hati’s; and then gave himself over to both of them, while the fever burned and throbbed in his brain. It would not abate, not for life, not for breath. He began to fear for himself, that it was a new dimension to the madness, that it would burst his heart. He feared the others might share it, and set on all of them in a frenzy like the beasts in heat; but what the others did with each other or to themselves around about, he had no clear idea.
No one troubled them, not for hours, and as the hours passed without a dawn they joined whenever the urge came on one of them. The others obliged, himself with Hati and Norit, the lean an’i Keran and the soft village wife with him in turn. He broke all the moral laws in the roaring dark, but found himself taken between times into quiet rest between them, a sweet haven. There, though voices spoke their names and the vision-objects came and went, tower and star and cave, he was sheltered from the storm. The whole world whirled away toward the east. The wind outraced them, sweeping them along in its wake; but he was safe. He was safe and protected as he had never been, no secrets, no guilt, no regret, no fear.
They slept, one naked, fevered lump, sweating precious moisture toward each other’s bodies, until came someone, a consensus of several of the tent’s occupants, came pleading for water, and asking, in a shout above the storm, when the storm should end and whether it had already been dawn.
“I am no prophet,” he shouted back, holding the man’s shoulder to make himself heard clearly. “Probably it’s dawn. This is a bad storm. Drink as little as you possibly can. Eat even more sparingly. You may be hungry, but if it goes on for five daysyou will not starve, do you hear me?” His madness informed him he could guess the duration of the storm and with abandon he leaned on that understanding. “Two more days and it will be past us,” he promised them. He was uncommonly sure of it, and: “Two days,” one shouted to the next, until they all agreed, and asked for their drink.
They numbered ten in this tent. There were five tents. The beasts took care of themselves, outside, bred to the storm and capable of surviving: they neither ate nor drank nor required attention while the wind blew, nor would stir from the shadow of the tents. There they would sit, nostrils mostly shut, eyes shut, ears folded, legs folded, to all useful purposes asleep, but capable of rousing whenever the wind shifted.
He wrapped his blanket about him and doled out from the personal waterskins a little water for each into the measured copper cap, in which he felt the level with his finger, and spilled not a drop. He likewise gave out small measures of dry cake, and instructed the villagers to eat it very, very slowly. “Where is the au’it?” he asked, and Hati found her, and he saw she, too, silent in the dark, had her ration. They had been days on the Lakht, had measured their water to reach Pori without resort to the wells, and now faced a lengthy delay that could become a serious matter if they were stalled here too long. They had divided all the water, placed a certain portion of it with each tent for safety, and he knew they were down on their supply, that they were not desperate, but that they were going to be scant on rations when they reached Pori.
After the others had gone back to their places, he shared the same measures of food and water with Norit and Hati, then slept. By now they made one bundle, their hands resting comfortably on one another, while the storm continued outside.
There were needs of nature: there was the latrine in the tent, the sand pit in the back left corner. Since the flaps were down; it was not possible to go outside, and the utter dark, more than the curtain, gave a general modesty.
At one point the potter told a bawdy story, and the orchardman told another.
He listened, and Hati jabbed him in the ribs, laughing, and began to trouble him again, which he did not refuse. Norit settled against him, soft and gentle, as different from Hati as night from dark; and in time Norit had her pleasure, too… no difference to her, it seemed, how it came, only that it came, and she kissed him and proved her gratitude.
He feared the other men in the tent might think he had too much of a good thing, and they had nothing but the potter’s stories. What they had started, the others had to know, and must be jealous. Still, he was omi, lord, and it was the nature of the world that lords had, and common men lacked.
Was it not the Ila’s law? Was it not the world the Ila had made, since the First Descended?
“Is it not evening?” one asked, wanting water, and he said no until three and four came asking. He thought he was right about the time, and held to it, and no one defied him.
After that, Norit claimed her turn first.
He came to know for certain in the dark that there was every virtue in Norit, except sanity. She sang against his ear. She spoke of a star to guide them east, when there was nothing but dark outside.
Finally she slept a true, sweet sleep, and after she slept he was very glad to have Hati’s safe arms about him and Hati’s strong body against his. Into Norit’s madness a man could sink and lose himself, bit by bit. Hati was the storm wind itself, a force, a demand for movement and resourcefulness. But in Norit the demons lived and had full possession.
Both of them still drew from him the best of his nature, Norit, that patience and compassion he had had only for what he protected, and Hati, that sense of life and challenge for its own sake that he had lost somewhere on the Lakht, in his father’s wars. He felt sorry for Norit; but he felt wholly alive when he held Hati. She was a match for him, completely unlike any match the ambitious villages had tried to send him when he was Tain’s son. No, he had said, rejecting some, and no, his father had said, never suspecting that any of those very sane girls would think him a bad bargain, never suspecting he said no for fear of discovery.
But now he owned himself met, matched, mated with a creature that would never give back a step from his most outrageous actions, never fear his madness, never hesitate.
Hati, he said to himself, but there was no speech in the howling thunder above them.
On the next day, that day he had been so sure the storm would pass, a pole tore loose and they had to go out, the four or five among them who understood how to pitch a tent, and secure the ropes. The air had chilled. The sun had been cut off from the sand so long the air and the sand itself had turned bitter cold. With fingernails broken to the quick by the dry sand they dug for the eye of the deep-stake bolt and found it by the ragged scrap of rope left to it, still warm from the heat of days ago. They dug down to it and rigged a new line.
Then they retreated, shivering and coughing and wiping grit from their eyes and their noses and the edges of their mouths.
The storm continued to batter them, and his two days bid now to be a lie. He was ashamed of having promised those who trusted him a relief he could not deliver; but at least they had saved the tent.