“I see you,” the stranger said.
“Don’t hurt her,” Marak warned the stranger, not remotely knowing how he might separate this stranger from Norit. “Don’t hurt her.”
For an instant there was a break, a less rigid backbone. “She isn’t hurting me,” Norit said. “But she scares me. She wants me to say… she wants me to say exactly the words, and not to think about them. All these things. I’m scared. But she says I’m safe if I don’t get up. She wants to talk to you.”
“Then, damn her, why doesn’t she come talk to me herself?”
“She says you’ll believe it if it comes through me. She says she wants you. She wants you, most of all, to listen to her.”
He was not well-disposed to anyone in this place. “To do what?”
“I think—” Norit began. “I think—I don’t know. I don’t know what she wants.”
“What do any of them want?” he retorted in anger at the powers behind the walls. Norit squeezed her eyes shut and held her hands to her ears. “Damn it, where is Hati?”
Marak! Marak! Marak!
The roaring grew and grew, and deafened him, and he flung himself down onto the bed, took Norit in his arms, and held her and rocked her against him, both of them rocking to the tides in the sound and the light and the noise. He would not surrender her to them, he would not surrender Hati, or himself.
“Don’t!” Norit cried, pushing at him. “Don’t, don’t, don’t!”
He began to understand it was at him Norit shouted. He relaxed his hold, letting her pull away, and tried to still the voices in his head. Marak, they said. Be calm—when his being calm was only to their advantage, none of his.
“We are mad,” Norit said, having captured half a breath, “we are mad because we have these creatures in our blood. And they have them inside, too. Luz has them, very, very tiny, so tiny no eye can see; but they move through our blood and through our ears and our eyes and they make us have the visions. They make the fever. They heal us. They make the sound and the pain and they build the lines we see in our eyes: they trace them on our eyes, and they whisper them into our ears. They take words out of the air, from the tower, to a place in the sky, to us, wherever we are.”
“Why?”
“They’re our gift.”
“A gift, is it?” He pushed Norit back to look at her, to see within her eyes whether he could see any trace of these engravings on her eyes. “Is it a gift, to be outcast from every civilized village? Is it a gift, to be whipped across the desert and die within a day of a village?”
“I am Luz,” she whispered, this woman almost within his arms, this body he had held tenderly at night and held now at arm’s length, like some venomous animal. “I say it is a gift. A gift we give, Marak Trin Tain, risking our lives!”
“Damn your gift!” he said, and shook her, and then was appalled, because it was Norit he had hurt. “ Damn your gift. We’re the ones who die for it. My mother and my sister will die because of your gift! I’ve sworn my life to the Ila because of your gift! Take it back! Let us go!”
“You need it.”
“For what?”
“Life,” Norit’s lips said, whispered. “Life, if you’ll take it. Life for more than the ones you’ve brought if you’ll listen.”
There had been a time he had chased the truth. He was not willing to find it in what this Luzdictated things to be. He would not take her word for the truth, not her desires, not her rules, not her half promises like some seller in the bazaar. None of it. He rose up off the bed, or began to, but Norit reached for his wrist.
He would have rejected the effort. It was the fumbling, desperate character of the grip that restrained him and reminded him that Norit, too, was there to suffer for what he said and did.
“She wants you to listen,” Norit said. “Please listen.”
There were many, many hostages, in the Ila’s hands, in Luz’s hands.
And where could he go? What could he do, to find Hati, and to rescue Norit?
“Listen to what?” he answered not Norit, but Luz.
“She wants you,” Norit said. “She wants you, because you’re Marak Trin Tain, because she knows your name, she knows who you are, she knows what you did in the war, and she knows the Ila sent you.”
“Yes the Ila sent me. The Ila gathered all the mad together and chose me to find her answer, to find out what we see and why we walk off into the desert to die like damned fools.” Temper rose up, the temper that was Tain’s curse, and his, and he choked it back, because it was only Norit he could hurt if he let it fly. “So what is this great truth? Why have we been tormented all our lives, and what good is it to anyone, and why should this Luz orthe Ila care about a handful of madmen?”
“She’s given us a gift,” Norit’s lips repeated, trembling at every word. Her eyes were immense, dark and haunted. She drew a deep breath, shut her eyes, and the tremor went away. “We have had our thirty years. Thirty years to gather in those that will listen, thirty years to store away your knowledge, so what you know… will not… will not perish.” She spoke. Then terror overwhelmed Norit. Her lips trembled into silence, as if she denied all that had flowed through her mouth.
Pity moved Marak’s hand to her cheek, gently, gently, and wiped a tear. “You are not to blame,” he said. “Norit. You are notto blame.”
“I love you,” Norit said. “You were kind to me, and I love you. Remember it if I can’t.”
It was like a good-bye. It haunted him. And there was nothing he could do to help her. He brushed her cheek, straightened her hair.
“Let her speak to me,” he said. “Let her speak. Let’s see if we can make sense of this. And damn this Luz, she’ll give you back your right mind again when she’s done.”
“I hear,” Norit’s lips said. And Norit’s eyes were in torment.
“Then tell the truth! Why do you do this to her? Why not come in here and speak to me yourself?”
Marak! roared in his head. Marak, Marak, Marak! so loudly that he flinched.
“Speak to me, damn you, don’t shout!”
“I’ve spoken to you,” Norit’s lips said, “for nearly thirty years, and you won’t hear me. You hear what you want to hear.” Norit hesitated, trembling. “You recast everything the way you want to hear it. You’re very stubborn.”
“It’s my father’s inheritance,” he said. He caressed Norit’s cheek and found his own hand trembling. “I’m here. Tell me whatever she wishes, Norit. I love you. For your sake, I’ll listen.”
“I can’t think!” Norit said in a faint voice. “I see things and I can’t think about them, and I hear words and they don’t make sense. She hates me; she says she doesn’t, but I know she does!”
“Let her be!” he said to whoever possessed Norit. “Talk to me, and let her be!”
“Norit is far easier.” Of a sudden Norit’s head drooped, and her whole body sank into his arms, so that for a moment he feared Norit was dead… but Norit lay in his embrace, aware, and breathing as if she had run for her life.
“Luz wants you to listen,” Norit whispered against him, teeth chattering. “Luz wants you to listen and not to fight her.”
“Hush,” he said. “Hush. I’ll try.” He did try. He shut his eyes and tried to make sense of the whisper in his skull.
“She thinks things,” Norit said, at the limit of her expression, trembling. “She wants things. My ears buzz. She’s angry because you won’t listen to her.”
“I’m trying! Let her give us Hati back. Let her make sense and come into this room and talk to us face-to-face. It was she I saw in the metal hall, wasn’t it? She’s flesh and blood like the rest of us. Why won’t she come here to talk?”