Norit’s eyes remained eloquent, and her whole body trembled and sweated with passion. Norit made love amid her madness, and said she saw a shining hall, and lights, and people walked there.
Marak himself saw the cave of suns; and Hati swore the same. The voices cried at them together, each in their own names, and the visions were the same vision and the whole world slid away toward the east under their backs.
They lay in each other’s arms all night.
Malin and a certain woman of the village, the au’it reported, obliged various of the men, and the soldiers were out of sorts, so perhaps the mystery of Malin’s bracelets was solved; but Marak let it go.
There was this to surviving the desert together, that life was worth celebrating, and those who had been wise could turn foolish and those who had been fools came out wise men; and if that was the source of Malin’s bracelets, Marak decided that was Malin’s business.
But in the night the visions increased, and the two ex-soldiers who had survived the Lakht, Malin’s lovers, walked away from the village toward the east, simply walking.
Marak found it out in the morning, when they gathered for a generous breakfast of flatbread and milk. They were two men short, Malin was smug in her collection of bracelets, and those two, once he knew the tale, he could all but feel, walking, walking, walking, waterless and foolish, put out with Malin, having had far too much drink last night, and having perhaps grown fonder of Malin than she of them.
“We should break camp and overtake them,” Marak said. The visions and voices troubled him more by the moment.
“Let them go,” Malin said: she had mistaken popularity for authority, and spoke out her opinions as she pleased.
“We have another day here,” Tofi protested.
“The men will die of thirst out there,” Marak said. He saw the hall and figures, as Norit had said. He saw men walking, and he had lost two men to those visions: Hati had said all visions were the same, and had they not seen what he had been seeing all night? “Unless we break camp now, they’re dead men. They have the visions we have. The calling is east. For once, Kassan and Foragi are right.”
Tofi looked unhappy, but even Maol murmured, “East,” and the look was in their eyes.
So they struck the tents, the slaves both moping through their task, mourning the rich tables of the village, and bundled up the gear a day ahead of their plan. They roused out the beasts, who were no more ready to leave than the slaves, and who put up a great protest of lamenting and moaning. The beasts fled the reach of the slaves, and predictably the whole village of Pori turned out to watch and laugh.
Hati frowned, but Norit thought it funny, and laughed, too. “A’ip!” Hati said sharply, the command to halt, and stalked out into the circling pursuit, seized her own reluctant beast by the halter lead, and brought him back. Then she snagged Marak’s, and brought him back, to the cheers of the onlookers, who mocked the slaves and cheered the other beasts on.
The au’it solemnly wrote her account, perched primly on a pile of their baggage awaiting beasts to carry it.
The beasts tired, the slaves put out a great effort, and caught one after another of the rebel animals. They had traded two of the beasts to the lord of Pori, and by refitting the saddles with side poles, made their other excess animals into pack beasts, but those complained about the loading, and hated the poles. It was all a swirl of bawling beasts and complaints and calls for this and that item in the most possible confusion.
The water-au’it meanwhile measured out the flow by which they filled all the waterskins, theirs and those large ones the beasts carried, to the brim. They favored themselves, at the Ila’s charge, with a last, full drink from the sweet water, and the lord of the village, not disparaging madmen who paid well, gave each of them a fresh fruit, even the slaves.
It was a welcome surprise. Tofi was ready, however, and gave the lord a token, one of their fine bronze heating-mirrors, wrapped in soft leather.
“Count this, too, from the Ila,” Marak said in all honesty.
“We look forward to your return,” the lord of Pori said, bowed deeply and cherished the big mirror against his heart.
Would they? Marak asked himself. He had not asked himself that question in their stay here. It was their mission. But would they?
The lord’s wife presented a bundle of dried fruit, which was a fine gift, too, one which Marak did not intend to hoard to himself; but by now he feared he was not as expressive as he wished. Marak, Marak, the voices were saying and in his head he saw the cave of suns and imagined Kassan and Foragi descending rocks, afoot, in danger. In his blood was a fever to be moving he had not felt since the Ila’s hall. Structures of fire shot through his vision, and the sweet-sour taste of the living fruit, dripping with juices, provided its own distraction. He bid farewell with juice-wet fingers and kept the pit in his mouth, too distracted for conversation or wit.
Haste, the voices seemed to say now. Haste, as if someone were waiting and impatient. Was the vision of Kassan and Foragi added to the rest? Or did ordinary men see such things? He had never understood, having been mad all his life.
There was still loud complaint from the beasts, from the village edge to the caravan track outside, and onto the flat that stretched before them. But, Marak! the voices said, over and over and over, and the fire was in the rest of them. Water and fresh fruit and willing flesh had no power like what seethed in the mad now. It had overpowered the soldiers. Now it overpowered even Malin, who might have wanted to stay in Pori. She wept. She ran off among the buildings. And she crept back again, and sought her riding beast, catching its rein. But she had no one to help her mount. She tried to make it kneel, and it only circled and bawled.
“Damn you!” she shouted. It made some of the villagers laugh, but none of the mad was amused.
“Do we want her?” Hati asked, in the haze of images and the din of voices.
Malin had gotten two village men to lift her up, and suffered indignities of their hands on the way. But she landed astride, her clothes utterly in disarray, and took the rein in both hands, and kicked the recalcitrant beast as fiercely as she could. It threw back its head and complained, but she had the rein in her hands, and turned him, to the howling mirth of the villagers.
“Let us go,” Marak said to Tofi, who was already out of countenance with the sudden departure, and with Malin, and the missing soldiers.
“This isn’t wise,” Tofi said. “This isn’t a race, omi.”
Marak was sure it was not. But it satisfied the voices. And not even Malin could slither out of their grip.
Chapter Nine
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The stars in heaven are numbered and the Ila knows the names of them.
—The Book of Oburan
They found their missing pair staggering along toward noon, glassy-eyed and confused, on a steep shale. Alive. That was the wonder.
“Where are you going, fools?” Marak asked.
“To the tower,” Foragi said, and the other, Kassan:
“The cave.”
“Give them water,” Marak said. “They seem alive enough to save.”
“Things are growing in our eyes,” the one cried, and it was all too true: Marak knew; all the mad knew: there were times that the lines of fire seemed to proliferate, to demand attention, to build and build and build.
They had brought beasts saddled for their fellow fools, but it was too steep to mount, and they were big men, too heavy to lift up at the disadvantage of the slope. The ex-soldiers had to walk down.