And if he was the god himself, Marak asked himself, beyond that, then would he flinch from the dust and the blasts of wind?
And if he were a ghost or a god, would he have watering eyes?
Marak thought not.
And was this Ianthe end of his visions, and all the madness?
Was this all?
Marak drew in a deep breath and folded his arms, feet braced against any inclination to move. “What do you want?” he asked this Ian bluntly.
Not welcomely so, he thought, since Ian looked at him, looked at him long and hard, not pleased. He might have been a curiosity, a momentary obstacle, a piece of some passing and despised interest.
“ You,” Ian said. “ You. Marak Trin Tain.” Ian walked a little past him, and looked at him, and then looked curiously at Norit, and at Hati, one by one. “They are with you.”
“Yes,” Marak said.
“You three,” Ian said. “Come with me. The others, stay in camp. You’ll be supplied whatever you need.”
No, was Marak’s first impulse, defiantly no.
Marak, Marak, Marak, the voices cried, pleading with him. Come.
His madness acquired a direction, and leaned toward this man, this stranger. He could have run screaming at the sun, turned circles like Maol. Marak, Marak, Marak, they said, deafening him, showing him memories of riding in the hills, confronting his father, walking away from all he knew… recalling for him the acclamation of an army, and the straggling, ragged line of the mad.
Marak!
He would do nothing, nothingto conform to his madness. Pride prevented him. He trembled, he gathered his strength, knowing he could not walk away in disdain and resist the eastward tilting without falling down.
“Come,” Ian said to him more civilly. “Come.”
The tilting made him stagger, finally, rarely, it swayed him off his balance, and he feared it would fling him down in the dirt if he resisted. Besides, this Ianoffered him answers, offered him the courtesy of asking repeatedly. Reluctantly, grudgingly, he followed, Hati and Norit walking with him: at least he had them where he could watch over them.
But then he was aware of another presence, another soft tread on the sand. Ian turned and said, harshly, “ I said the three.”
Marak turned, too, and saw the au’it, who clutched her book to her chest and wide-eyed, thin-lipped, resisted the dismissal.
“She is the Ila’s au’it,” Marak said. “She has orders to go where I go.“
“Whose orders?”
“The Ila’s.”
“The Ila’s orders have no weight here,” Ian said.
“They have with me.” They had stopped on the exposed hill, where the wind battered them and the heavier sand stung bare skin, Ian’s scent came to them on that wind, too, a curious scent, like sun-heated cloth, like living plants. “We’re all mad here except the young master, the two slaves, and the au’it. We see visions and hear voices. Do you?”
Ian gazed at him a long, long moment, seeming to measure him twice and three times and perhaps not to like the sum he arrived at. He was a strange sort of man, strange in his smell, tanned, with wisps of pale hair blowing out from under the headcloth, and with narrow, close-lidded eyes. Marak had never seen such sun-bleached hair, and never seen green eyes, green like stagnant water. The cloth of the sand-colored robes was fine as that in the Ila’s court, cloth of gauze of many lengths and layers, so that they blew and whipped in the wind, individually as light as the dust itself.
Wealth, such cloth said. Power, that wealth said.
And that the Ila’s orders did not reach here did not persuade him to trust this Ian, no matter how the voices dinned into his ears and no matter how the feelings in his heart said this was, after all his trials, the place. The Ila ruled everything. In Kais Tain they might have said that the Ila’s rule did not extend there, but they did not disrespect an au’it.
“Come,” Ian said then, shrugging off the matter of the au’it, ignoring her presence, and led them farther, over the low dune. After that they walked along Ian’s back trail—he left tracks like a man—on for some little distance toward a sandstone ridge, and along that for a considerable distance south.
Go with Ian, the voices said. Believe him. This is the place. This at last is the right place.
The desire and the voices grew, overwhelming better sense, and heat, and thirst. But limbs grew weary in walking. Feet ached, and rubbed raw in boots. The au’it lagged, carrying her heavy book, and Norit stumbled.
Still Ian walked at the same pace.
“If we were to trek all afternoon to get where we’re going, we might have saddled the beasts,” Marak said, vexed, helping Norit.
Ian turned and confronted him for another lengthy stare, a test of wills, perhaps.
Or perhaps Ian heard voices of his own. It occurred to Marak at that moment that such might be the case.
“Not far, now,” Ian said, and led them, at a slower pace, up another rise.
In the great distance and through the blowing dust a slope-walled spire rose up ahead of them, rising out of the flat desert as the land rose. It was an anomalous thing, and yet familiar, so very familiar it sent chills down Marak’s spine.
Hati touched his arm, for a moment stopped still, and half whispered, “The spire.”
“The tower,” Norit said.
Closer, the voices whispered. Closer, Marak Trin Tain.
“Come,” Ian said again.
They struggled to keep Ian’s pace, and it was hard to ignore the clamor of voices, now, urging Faster, faster, faster.
Hard, but possible. They were not fools, and he was not a slave to his madness. Marak deliberately slowed his pace, walking at a rate he thought Norit and the au’it could sustain. Hati slowed. So they all fell behind. Ian looked back, displeased, but none of them walked faster, so Ian fell to their pace.
Slower still, as the tower grew clearer out of the air, and clearer. They came close enough to see the stony ground around about it, a strange depression atop a hill of cindery rocks, with bits of glass catching the light.
Marak paused for rest, to Ian’s great annoyance, as the sun was setting, as those bits of glass were catching the red light.
It was a tower as great as any in the holy city, and not a structure of air and fire. Its sand-colored walls, casting back the sunset glow in the west, might be stone, but if so, there was no joint of masonry.
“It has no windows,” Norit said, “nor doors.”
And what use was it in itself, Marak asked himself, and why had it haunted the mad, and what did it mean to any of them? As a dream it had seemed to mean things on its own, a high place, a landmark to guide the mad.
If it was a real place it had to have uses, and occupants, and a reason for being there.
For that reason, too, he sat down where he stood, and Hati and Norit and the au’it settled by him.
“It’s not that far,” Ian said, standing as if ready to walk again.
“Why should we trust you?” Marak said. “Why should we go any farther? We’ve seen what it is.”
“Have you?” Ian asked. “You haven’t seen everything. And you know nothing. Get up.”
Up, up, up, the voices echoed in Marak’s head. He saw the cave of suns, and now Norit’s figures moving within that cave. Norit and Hati each had his hands, and Norit’s was cold. Hati’s sweated; and the au’it wrote, hunched over to protect her book from the wind.