Hammerfall (24 page)

Hati's bath chamber provided a gilt-framed bed, and he led her to it, and they lay down, under the bronze lamps, weary, and able at least to rest. Thunder rumbled in the skies, and more than once they felt the earth give a slight shudder. That brought the crack and crash of stone as the nearby ruin settled.

“She's too proud to listen,” Hati said, as they lay there wrapped in each other's arms. “She's lost everything she had, and I think she's too proud to take this offer.”

“You were supposed to leave and go with the beshti,” he said. “You were supposed to be with Tofi, safe, so I didn't have to worry.”

“Not as I see it.”

“You saw your tents. The Keran are here. Could you go to them?”

Hati shook her head, a tumble of moist braids on his arm, a scent of oils and herbs. “No. And if the Ila agrees to be sensible and go, we'll all go. And if she doesn't, I'll go and tell the Keran the truth, and then see what they do.”

“Don't threaten her.” He moved his left hand over her braids, smoothed her brow as she leaned her head against him. “Escape this place. You can walk out there, change your robe, and be one of ten thousand.”

Hati heaved a long, deep sigh, and in that sigh was the chance of violence and dire actions considered, and denied.

“Only with you. If you wish me to leave, man of my choice, we both go to my tribe.”

“Memnanan hinted that my mother and my sister might be here.”

“Fine. We'll rescue them. We'll go east. We know where the stars fall. We'll go fast through that part.”

It was dreaming out loud.

And it was dangerous, counting the thin curtains that surrounded them. The whole of his life had turned fragile, and all of life he trusted, all of life he held as his was in his hands, in Hati's slim, hard arms, in the confident look in her eyes. There might only be this. They might die at any moment. And life had never been worth more to him.

“The Ila knows about the healing, doesn't she?” Hati asked.

“I think she does know,” he said. Above the tent he heard the thunder, and heard the distant shift of uneasy stone in the ruins. He was too weary to make love. He thought that Hati was, too. They simply looked at one another until Hati's eyes began to drift shut, and then did close.

He lay very, very still, for Hati's sake, despite the muttering of heaven and earth, and had one lengthy sleep toward what he thought must be dawn.

Then men-servants came in and provided them clothes, and brought them dried fruit and fresh bread, with butter . . . butter, which was a rare treat.

Memnanan came next. “Marak Trin,” he said. “Come. The Ila wishes to speak to you.”

Hati was immediately concerned, and was a move away from getting up to go with him, but Memnanan had a word for her, too. “Stay here. He will be safer if you do.”

Hati sank back down and cast him a look as if to ask if he thought that was the truth.

“Do as the captain asks,” Marak said.

It is the Ila's will that the abjori should exist, and at her pleasure and on a day to come, they will cease to exist: for this hour they are the trial of her people, gathering all her enemies together so that everyone may know them.

—
The Book of the Ila's Au'it

MEMNANAN BROUGHT HIM
alone through the maze of veils, stopped him in a narrow space, and nudged his arm to gain his attention.

“The Ila spent the entire night with the au'it,” Memnanan said. “Watch yourself. Rein back that temper of yours. This time it won't serve you, or the women.”

“Why do you warn me?” Marak asked, trying to catch the man eye to eye. “You being the Ila's man, why should you warn me?”

“Would you come this far, through so much, to tell her a lie?”

It was the plain truth, he discovered of himself. He was not set on the Ila's destruction.

Then what don't you believe? he wanted to ask Memnanan, seeing Memnanan believed him that far. What don't you believe, and what doesn't
she
?

But Memnanan
was
the Ila's man.

“Come with me,” Memnanan said, and led him through the last three curtains, where the Ila sat as she had sat last night, with the au'it by her. Another au'it—who might be theirs—sat nearby, on a carpet at the side of the chamber. Lamps still burned here, hung on golden chains, but with the leaden light seeping through the canvas the lamps seemed less bright than last night.

“Well,” the Ila said. “Well.” She held out her red-gloved hand and beckoned him. “Come,” she said. “Show me your arm this morning.”

Marak came close enough and pushed up his sleeve, no more surprised than she to find it only pink flesh.

“So,” the Ila said.

“I heal well,” he said, letting fall his loose sleeve. “I always have.”

“So again,” the Ila said. “And do you understand the makers, as this Luz calls them? The nanoceles?”

“No. I don't, at all.”

“Falling stars,” the Ila scoffed. He was accustomed to shame, regarding the visions. But these were no visions. He had seen the pits where they fell, and he would not be dissuaded.

“There are,” he said.

“So this
Luz
has appointed herself our savior. Our god. And wants me to go to her.”

“She wants everyone.”

“Oh, doubtless she does! You're
still
mad,” the Ila said. “Have you looked about this tent? Do you see the size of this encampment? And you'll lead us all to the edge of the Lakht?”

It was a question, a very terrible question. And the aui'it wrote it in their books.

“If we have to do it, we have to do it,” Marak said quietly. “These encamped are the villages. They have their harvest tents, and beshti enough to get here. There are the tribes, who know how to get anywhere they choose to go. All I have to do is tell them ‘beyond Pori,' and they'll know.”

“And will this
Luz
stop the fall of stars?”

“I don't know. I don't think she can.” That sort of honesty was his besetting fault. It had gotten him his father's chastisement a hundred times before he could learn prudence. But he plunged ahead. “I don't know what she can and can't do. Or what you can. She's a stranger. I came to ask you, can
you
stop this?”

Perhaps no one had ever asked the Ila to do something impossible for her. She frowned at him, frowned long and hard.

“Such faith.”

“I don't have faith,” he said. “I don't trust strangers.”

“Or me.”

“At least you're not a stranger.”

“So she wants me to come there. For what?”

It was the foremost question, and he could not answer that.

“If we stay here,” the Ila said, and in that little time the earth shivered and shook, so that the aui'it gripped their books tightly as they wrote. “If we stay here, we will die. Do you believe that?”

“I know that for a truth,” he said, trying to gather his wits, beset by her and the restless earth. “I know the
way
to the tower beyond Pori.” It struck him that the Ila had
sent
him to Pori, not to the west, not to the north, not to the south, but specifically to Pori. She knew where the tower was. She had known before she sent him.

How much else had she known before she sent him?

“And you can guide us,” the Ila said.

“If I can't, I have Norit.”

“
You
have Norit,” the Ila scoffed.
“Luz
has Norit.”

“When Luz is done with her,” he said, “she's my wife.”

“Your wife!”

“Norit has no part in what Luz does.”

“Have
you
?” the Ila asked him sharply. “Have you any part in what Luz does?”

He asked himself. And shook his head. “No.” He added, because it was the absolute truth, “I don't
trust
Luz.”

The Ila lifted her chin, looked down at him with hard and suspicious eyes. “Do you trust me more?”

“
You
never offered me anything.”

The Ila made a bridge of her gloved hands. “Oh, but I did.”

He shook his head, denying it. “I asked a favor of you, and you agreed. You never offered me anything.”

“So I sent you out,” the Ila said, “a man who eluded my patrols for three years, and this
Luz
took you up as quick as seeing you. Or quicker. She knew who you were. I doubt she had to listen to rumor to know you for the great Marak Trin Tain. You are her prize among the mad. What did she offer you?”

“What she offers everyone. Paradise. Paradise in white tents beside a green river.” That image came back to him, but the more urgent visions were of disaster. “That was before the stars fell. I have no idea what's become of that place now. I think it's still safe. I think Norit would act differently if anything happened to her. Luz hasn't left her but moments at a time, all through our journey.”

The Ila's lips rested against those bridged fingers. Her eyes burned, dark and deep.

“I have your mother, Marak Trin, and your sister. And your father.”

So. He had steeled himself against caring. Against anything that could be a weapon in her hands.

“So you promised,” he answered quietly. And suspected everything she said, every motive in her heart. “So I kept my promise to you.”

“Virtuous of us.”

She prodded at him, wanting an answer. He could think of none. He simply kept still.

“Suppose I said to lead all these people to the tower, Marak Trin. What would you do? How would you manage it?”

He drew a deep breath, a fleeting chance to think of first things, and second. “Do you want me to answer in specific?”

“Do.”

“First, put in charge of each unit those who led them here. If a unit has beasts, they keep them. If they have tents, they keep them. If they have waterskins, they keep them. It's only fair. They have foresight. It makes them the likelier to live. Have the order of march and camp understood. Set the tribes to the fore: they would move quickest. Whoever moves slowest, falls behind, and who falls behind . . . there's nothing anyone can do. They'll die.”

“It's that simple.”

“Nothing can be simpler. The Lakht is the Lakht. It's never different, no matter who asks.”

The Ila lowered her joined hands to her lap. “Captain.”

“Ila,” Memnanan said from back near the curtains.

“Assist him in this undertaking.”

Marak blinked, thinking, Surely not, not that easily, not that quickly.

Not me, not over all this.

But silence followed. He understood dismissal, with that, and began to back away.

“Marak!”

He stopped. “Ila,” he said, as Memnanan did.

“When will this people set out?”

When did not rest in his hands.
When
rested in the star-fall and the calamity in the earth.

Marak, Marak,
the voices clamored, suddenly riotous with urgency. Norit knew what was agreed. He was sure she knew. And then he was sure that Hati did.

“Tonight,” he said, and took his life in his hands, for what had to be said. “I would advise, Ila, that you yourself use a common tent, one that two men can raise and pack, for your own safety. That you carry more food and water than weapons.”

An implacable face met that judgment. “You would leave each segment of the caravan to its own decisions.”

He had not asked himself why he chose as he did. It had seemed evident. Now he did ask. “The line of march will stretch too long. The leaders can't be everywhere along the line. The fastest have to go first. I will, however, give them advice, such as I have. Shelter, water, food, and then weapons. Beshti won't take the Ila's orders: they limit their loads.”

The aui'it stopped writing. Everything stopped.

The Ila lifted a hand and made a gesture toward the second au'it, a command to rise, a second command less apparent.

The au'it went to the curtain behind the Ila's seat, and drew it back, and there sat, pile after pile, books, books of the aui'it's recording, hundreds, thousands of books, leather covers, canvas covers, stained books, ornate ones tattered with age and use.

“This is the knowledge,” the Ila said. “And what will this
Luz
give to have it? And how will you move these, Marak Trin? Tell me how you will do it.”

He was stunned. A village house could scarcely contain that pile. His voices clamored at him,
Marak, Marak, Marak,
and he had no idea what their desire was, or if Luz understood what he saw, or what it meant. They were the books of the aui'it, all the knowledge, all the recorded history there was.

“This is my condition,” the Ila said as the earth shuddered, a small thump, like a heartbeat. “Not the tent, not this piece of furniture. They can go to hell. Where I go,
this
goes. Can you find beasts enough?”

“I'll find a way,” he said on a deep breath.

The Ila regarded him thoughtfully. “Do that,” she said, and moved her fingers in dismissal. “Do it by tonight.”

That was all.

Marak,
the voices said. He tried to manage his retreat. Memnanan guided him, held the curtain aside for him, took him by the arm. He saw fire, and ruin.

By tonight.

“I need the two women,” he said to Memnanan.

“Not your father?” Memnanan asked. “Not your mother?”

“I have no time,” he said. He remembered his father's parting with him and had no desire to see him. And for his mother and his sister there was no time.

Marak, Marak, Marak,
the voices said, let loose, given sudden free rein. In his vision the rings of fire spread again and again: pools glowed red as iron in a forge, and he could all but smell the smoke.

He struggled to think and make lists. “I need Tofi. I need Hati and Norit. I need every leader of every tribe and village to meet me on the edge of the camp, on the caravan road to the south, inside an hour.”

Memnanan looked at him, then passed the order to a subordinate who waited nearby. “See to the meeting,” Memnanan said, with a wave of his hand, and that man gathered two others.

So the matter would spread, without their help. But Memnanan stood fast. “The two women. Luz's eyes and voice.”

“One is Luz's voice,” Marak said. “The other is an'i Keran. That tribe of all tribes will survive to reach the tower. If my mother and sister are here, let them go to the Haga. If they're there, that's all I need to know. They'll be safer than I can make them.”

“And Tofi for his skills? He's a boy.”

“Not since his father died. I want him, and his two men. He of all the masters understands exactly what's out there. I want him to manage the Ila's tents. Our tents.”

“Beasts to carry the books?”

The captain might have his own estimate how many that was, a massive caravan unto itself, able to carry neither food nor tents.

“In the deep desert,” Marak said, “we lost a besha on a slide and it started a mobbing. The mob left not a bone, not a scrap of leather. The besha was taller than either of us. The largest of the vermin in it didn't top a man's knee. We didn't wait to watch, but I'll imagine a man could watch it vanish.”

“A remarkable sight,” Memnanan said. “The god's wonder you lived. What do you mean?”

“That you don't need beasts to carry the books. You need the strongest, the likeliest men to live, of every village, every tribe.”

Memnanan said nothing for a moment, frowning, but with thoughts sparking within his eyes. “Allow the books into the hands of the tribes?”

“Do you want these books to come through?” Marak asked, and saw that Memnanan listened to him intently. “Will these books pitch tents and manage a half a hundred beshti? Men do that far better. The books will have thousands of feet, and if one is lost, they won't all be lost.” He drew a breath, space to think. “This caravan can't camp in a ring. They'll be strung out like beads on a necklace. We can't help that. If fools drink all their water, we can't help that. Water the beasts to the full. Feed them. Fill every waterskin in camp. Even the bitter wells are uncertain.”

“That saves the villages. Oburan itself has few tents at all . . . few beasts, except the breeding herd. They're city folk. They don't know the desert.”

“Apportion the important ones like the books, a few to every band. If there are too many walkers, they go last, enough strong hands to drive stakes, a besha to carry the canvas and keep them headed right if they drop behind.” The beasts would smell the way to those in front, given any breath of an east wind or a lingering scent above the trail. A caravan this large would assuredly leave scent. It would leave a trail of waste, breakage, vermin, and all too many lives.