Hati pointed after a time to something Marak’s eye had begun to pick out far to the west, in the sunset, a particularly bright seam of light. But they had no notion, any of them, what that was. The au’it wrote, clutching her book and her pen and her ink-cake despite the lurch of the beast under her, in the absolutely last of the light.
As the sun faded and the stars showed, that glow persisted.
“Like fire,” one of the freedmen said. “What’s out there to burn?”
None of them knew. In the dark, stars began to fall again, none of the noisy sort, only a steady, gentle, remorseless fall.
“Will they all fall?” Hati asked at last in distress, scanning the heavens as they rode. She pointed at bright Almar. “See, Almar is still up there.”
“They are not stars that fall,” Norit said. “Almar won’t be among them.”
“What are they, then?” Marak asked, angry not at Norit, but at Luz. “What are they? Are they the vision?”
“Water,” Norit said. “Water, iron… stone and metals. A wealth of iron.”
Perhaps it was Norit that answered him, out of her madness. Or Luz told them the unlikely truth.
They never knew what the burning was. That next day, when they pitched the tent and lay down on their mats, Norit turned her back to both of them and lay apart.
Marak looked at Hati, questioning, and Hati at him, but neither of them knew what to do for her. He knew that within Luz’s will, Norit suffered, and that knowledge left him sleepless as they rested.
He thought about it. He tried to think what to do.
The au’it slept. Tofi and the men slept. There were no witnesses. He gave Hati’s hand a squeeze, one comrade asking leave of another, and moved to Norit’s side, stroked Norit’s arm, and after a time moved her hair aside from her ear to whisper into it: “Norit. Do you want to make love?”
Norit flinched and covered her eyes, turning away.
He was given a no, but not, he thought, from Norit, who had no choice about Luz, or the visions. He had never forced himself on a woman. But he knew the ravages of the madness, how it ate up sleep and gave no rest, and wore out the body without giving it any useful ease. He saw it happening to Norit, and he gathered Norit up in his arms and kissed her on the lips.
“Let me go!” Luz cried. She struck him with the heel of her hand, trying to break free.
“Let Norit go,” he retorted, and did not abate his attentions, not though Norit’s body struggled and her mouth cursed as Norit never had, with words that made no sense in any dialect.
Her struggles, her outcries, waked Tofi and the slaves and the au’it, who stared in dismay. Had he not disapproved the soldiers for the very same act?
He spent no time explaining his actions. He swept Norit up and carried her out of the tent kicking and struggling. Gently, for Norit’s sake, he set her down on the shaded sand outside and proceeded to what he intended.
“Damn you!” Luz cried.
Only when Norit pounded him with her fists and began to gasp after breath did he turn gentle with her, and then Norit simply lay in his arms and cried and sobbed. He had least of all intended to hurt her.
“You hate me,” she wept. “You hate me!”
“Never, Norit,” he said, and added honestly: “I’m not that sure about Luz.”
She struck at him, and he caught her fist easily within his, she was so small and her violence so slight. He lifted her face and tried to make her look at him, but she shut her eyes.
“Tell me the truth, Norit. Tell me the truth. Do you hear me? Look at me and tell me the truth. What do you want, and what does Luz want?”
Her eyes squeezed shut. She made no other struggle, no other response, either, as he tucked her clothing back to rights and smoothed her hair gently into place. He had no idea what he had won, or if he had won any relief for Norit—he had hoped if he could bring her back for an hour, Norit might have a chance, and he knew by what seethed in his own mind that she had less of a chance if Luz was always there.
But now he regretted doing what he had done. He had tried to help Norit. He had no idea now whether he had scared her instead of Luz, or offended her, or what vengeance he might have brought down on them all.
He led her back into the tent and let her go, and she sat down on her own mat. She sat staring at the wall for a long while before she lay down again and tucked her clothing tightly about her.
Tofi and the men likely were awake with all the commotion, but they were pretending otherwise. The au’it certainly had waked, and wrote, silent in her preoccupation.
Hati lay with one arm beneath her head, gazing at the sun through the canvas as he lay down beside her.
“Luz has her all the time,” he said. “I don’t know which I dealt with. I tried to help. I don’t think I did.”
“Norit knows what you do,” Hati said. “Norit wants help.”
“I think she does. But she can’t push Luz out.”
“Norit can’t say no to anyone, least of all to Luz. But she wants you. She wants you more than anything.”
“What can I do? What cure is there for her?”
“None,” Hati said, “until Norit says no to Luz.” Hati rolled over and opened her arms to him, and drew him in despite the heat.
At that small move, Norit moved, and leapt up, and shoved the au’it out of the way and sent the au’it’s pen into the sand in her rush out of the tent.
Marak leapt up, and Hati did, dodging the au’it, half-stumbling over Tofi and his helpers, hurrying to stop her as she raced out of the shade of the tent.
Norit ran past the resting beasts, wasting strength and sweat in the heat, and Marak ran foremost after her. Hati ran behind him. There was a rock shelf beyond, where a careless foot might slip, and Norit sent herself straight for it, maybe knowing what was there, maybe forgetting that hazard.
Before she could reach that edge Marak caught her, and barely so. They fell down on the stony ground, full length.
Her clothing had saved her skin, except her hands bled. His arm bled. But the madness was in possession of her. She struck at him as he got up and dragged her to her feet, struck him hard, and then only halfheartedly. “I want to die,” Norit cried, as he held her, but Luz said, in the next breath, trying to stand erect: “She won’t succeed. I won’t let her come to harm.”
He still had possession of Norit’s wrist. Hati arrived at a walk, now, ahead of Tofi and his two men. To their appalled looks, he shook his head and walked toward the camp, leading Norit by a firm grip.
Norit said not a thing, nor objected when he set her down on her mat and harshly told her to stay there. The blood on her hands was still fresh, but the wounds were already dry as if hours old.
The au’it had not ventured far from the tent. She had watched their return. She sat and wrote, now, a dry, persistent scratching, recording Norit’s desperate rush toward death.
Marak, Marak, Marakwas in his head, then. He expected vengeance, pain, he had no idea what, but what he received was a dinning urgency to move on. Haste, the voices said. Haste. Enough. The vision of the falling star began again.
He went out and began kicking furiously at the tent stakes.
Then Tofi and Hati, outside, began to help him. He ripped his own hand bloody, pulling up a stake, and the pain scarcely reached him.
“Damn them!” he shouted at the white-hot sky. “Damn them all!”
But no one answered, no one came to offer reason. Hati went to bring out Norit and the au’it and their mats out before the tent went down.
It billowed flat, the former slaves folded it, packed it, and loaded it in rare, fearful silence. The sun was still high as they mounted up and rode on, and the beasts, ignorant of all the mistakes they had made, grumbled, disturbed early from their cud-chewing.