Tofi and the freedmen did not then unpack the baggage, and the beasts complained about that, squalling and rumbling in the heat.
So they sat, all of them, like fools, and waited for this danger, and they waited, and the unwilling beasts shifted their limbs under them and complained noisily, with no relief from the packs or the saddles in the sweltering heat. Tails whipped, beat the sand, thump.
Suddenly the beshti set to bawling again.
The earth shook itself like a beast twitching its skin, a hard shaking. Tofi’s riding beast, which had started to rise in panic, plumped back down again, unhurt, but rolling its eyes and bellowing to the heavens.
Norit sat with her hands in her lap, combing out a tassel on her headcloth.
The tremor passed. Tofi swore and hid his face in his hand, looked up again as if to be sure it was over.
Norit showed no inclination to move.
“Shall we go?” he asked Norit.
“Not yet,” Norit said. She stared into nothing, the tassel forgotten.
The sphere fell against the greater sphere. The ring of disturbance went out. Marak saw it. He knew Hati did. Hati’s hands were clenched on her quirt until the knuckles stood white.
The au’it, having endured one shaking, grimly gripped her book and her ink-cake, and wrote, braced for more disturbance.
Time passed.
“Shall we pitch the tents?” Tofi asked at last. The sun was high. It seemed now that they would not go beyond this place before noon.
“No,” Norit said shortly, in a tone not inviting question. “Stay still.”
Marak shrugged and found occupation sharpening his boot-knife, as Hati and two of the helpers had tucked up and attempted to sleep.
Norit combed out the one tassel and three or four others.
Then a haze in the west caught Marak’s eye, a fuzzy seam on the far horizon that grew wider and wider and wider every instant.
“Hati,” he said as it grew. And to all of them, “ Storm.”
Damn Luz, there was no time to pitch the tent. The storm came like sand flowing downhilclass="underline" it went from that seam to a band across the horizon to a towering wall faster than he had ever seen a storm move, less like a wind than a landslide. In hardly longer than a panicked mind could think about it, that wall filled the sky, and rushed over them with a stench of earth and heat like nothing Marak had ever smelled.
The beasts did not attempt to rise: with successive shoves of their knees and hind feet, they shifted about to present their backsides to that oncoming wind, burdens and all.
Sand began to blast over them, stinging exposed skin.
“Get together!” Tofi shouted, flinging his arms about Marak and Hati. The au’it folded her book and put away her writing kit. Norit moved closer to them, the au’it joined them; and Tofi’s two men, and they all pressed themselves against the sun-heated earth, together, making a single lump, robes tucked up for shelter.
The moving sand deafened them and dimmed the light. Marak protected his eyes with the headcloth and tried to see through that veil, and found only greater dark and lesser. It grew hard to breathe through the folds of cloth. The smell was that of a sandstorm, and of hot sand and of deep sand and of burning.
There was no substance left in the air; they struggled for the least whisper of breath, losing strength, until at last the air came, tasting like the wind off a forge.
Lying together, faces buried in each other’s robes, they gasped and breathed such as they could, fighting for the dusty air they drew, and dared not move, while the wind roared over them, and kept on, and kept on.
But air there began to be, if only a trickle through cloth; and the sand that blasted over them began to settle long enough to become a weight in the folds of their robes. It found ways in among them, in the crooks of arms and legs, building supports under them, finding crevices to fill, threatening to bury them alive.
Breathing was the greatest concern. They fought to stay behind the wall of sand that built against them and atop what built under them. It seemed forever before the gust front passed and they could stir out of their sand-choked huddle, still wind-battered and blinded by the blowing sand, but able to stand.
The beasts had suffered. One was down under his pack, alive, but unable to free himself until they removed the baggage that trapped him at disadvantage, and by then he had been lying so long he was paralyzed. They had to rock and pull and haul him to rights and up to his feet. Three had painful windburns on their rumps, where the hide was blasted bare and red, and the canvas that wrapped the packs, part of the tents, was worn through several layers on one edge.
They were all alive, that was the miraculous thing. They were alive, though the sky was still a sandy murk, and the air still stank like hot iron.
“If we pitch a tent,” Tofi said, muffled in his veils against sand and dust, “it will not stand with this constant shaking. Best we do as we have done, build a wall of the baggage and stretch our canvas from it. I’ve never seen a storm come on like that,”
“Will there be another?” Marak asked Norit, hard-edged. Norit said nothing. “What should we do? Luz? What comes next?”
The vision of the spreading rings repeated itself in his mind, over and over and over, making no sense.
Came another shock, a great one, a long one, and the one beast that had gotten up staggered and bellowed its distress.
“Norit!” Hati shouted.
“Camp here,” Norit said.
Pressed to invention, they and the slaves unburdened all the beasts and contrived to stretch canvas from a stack of baggage to a few anchoring stakes, lashed down so it would shed sand that accumulated from hour to hour.
That gave them a measure of comfort. They slept, but slept by turns to go out and keep the two entries clear. The sand-fall, no longer blasting, but a general murk in the air, went on and on into true dusk, then a night so deep and so cold they huddled together, men and women, freemen and freedmen together.
When morning came creeping through the murk, there was no talk of moving on. Those habituated to the desert were used to waiting out storms, and were schooled to patience even this near a goal. So they waited, deciding finally that the ground had stopped shaking enough to try the pegs. They pitched their tent for comfort, and salved the animals’ seeping windburns, which were crusted over with sand.
At that, they and the beasts alike had proper shelter, and they rested wrapped in double robes against a cold unlike any they had ever felt.
“I’ve never seen the like,” Hati swore, shivering. “In the deepest desert I’ve never seen such a storm.”
“Tomorrow the sand-fall will be less,” Norit said.
There was no question in Marak’s mind that Norit knew exactly what would happen. Norit crept close to him and then Luz shoved away. Alone, Norit bowed her head and wiped her eyes in silent tears. There was no solution he could give. He offered his hand, and she jerked away. It tore his heart to watch her.
Hati shook her head as if she could read his thoughts, and rubbed his shoulders, making him realize his muscles were set like stone. She had clever fingers and knew where to press. He stretched out finally and slept, and for a few hours the dreams left him in peace.
On the next day the storm abated somewhat; but the taste in the air was that of sulfur. The wind stank, and it burned the eyes. They ate beneath the canvas, and carefully shielded their food from the foul stuff that blew in from the sky, under a yellow murk in which the noon sun was a spot in the haze.
“The grass and the grain will wither,” Norit said. “All the west is ruins. But that’s not the worst.”
Kais Tain was in the west. All his father’s household was in the west. Marak wanted to strike her senseless. He had done all he had done, he had survived all he had survived, and Norit told them calmly that nothing lived in the west.
Marak, the voices said in the midst of it all, clamoring for his action. Marak.
Norit said, aloud, “We should go now.”