Hammerfall (23 page)

“Luz takes her,” Marak said, with a distracted glance at Norit. Her face was white and still, terrified. “She can't stop it. She's a woman from Tarsa; she's never been outside her village. She isn't doing this.”

“This is a dangerous woman,” the Ila said considerately, the hand half-lifted. “This is an extremely dangerous woman.”

“I'm your hope of salvation,” Norit said sharply. “You've
lost
. Your enemies have found you. We bargained with them for your lives. We've worked here thirty years to save
something
of what you built, first, because we couldn't come closer to you inside your guards and your protection, and second, because we didn't think you
would
hear us, and third, because we wouldn't lose the rest, trying to save
you
. When we knew we had Marak Trin among the mad, we
tried
to take the Lakht and gain your attention
,
but he couldn't reach his father, and his father couldn't reach
you.
”

“With Tain's army?” The Ila laughed as a man might laugh at a very grim joke, on his father, on his entire house and all their effort, and it stung. “From the beginning, that wasn't likely.”

“But you reached
him,
” Norit said, while Marak remained paralyzed by this step-by-step disclosure of the facts of his life, a simple process of logic and history. “Knowing what we had made him, but not
that
we had made him, you chose him for your messenger. Entirely reasonable. There was no one better, no one more likely. And having sent a messenger, I assume you intended something more than to wish us well.”

Luz
dared
to challenge the Ila, to question her. The guards, the whole chamber poised and braced for retaliation.

“Because,” the Ila said, as if it were no consequence, and with a turn of her wrist, as if she deflected a blow.
“Because we wished to send him, cousin. Because through him you challenged us.
Because he is less mad than the rest, and because I saw if any of that herd would come back across the Lakht, he was the likeliest. And if there were madmen appearing across the land, it was as clear a sign of something arrived as was likely to come. Yes, I sent him. I sent him to find an answer to the madness, and to explain it, and he has, beyond any doubt.”

“But they're no longer mad, those I keep. They are safe. They
will be
safe in what will come. You know the nature of their voices. You know the source of their visions. I don't need to explain. More than that, you feared, Ila Jao, you
feared
we were the
ondat
. We are
not.
”

“But in their service.”

“Not in their service, only having made peace with them. You know what they fear and why they fear it and why they will reshape the world.”

The Ila stared, stone-faced. “I can guess.”

“Omatbarat. Do you know that name?”

“I know it. I was not there.”

“As we know. You were not there.”

“Yet they come here to destroy the world.”

“To reshape it. To stir the pot and be sure that what arises here out of the soil of this world is shaped by this world,
not
by you, Ila Jao. When
we
say to them that the makers
we
loose have had their way with the world, then,
then
the armistice will hold and the
ondat
will admit their war is over. But until that day a handful of us of your own kind have set ourselves down here, damned ourselves along with you, for
your
fathers' sins, Ila Jao. We bear you personally no ill will. More than that. We can save you, if you aren't a fool.”

There was a heartbeat of terrible silence.

The Ila's white hand lifted abruptly, made a gesture for silence as a hushed murmur began among the officers. Pens made rapid strokes—ceased, as the aui'it stopped, both of them.

“And the other madmen?” the Ila asked.

“Remained at the tower,” Norit said.

“Who is this woman?” the Ila asked aside, of Memnanan, and, looking straight at Hati: “Are you a prophet, too?”

“No,” Hati said. “No, Ila. But I saw the tower. I saw tents all around it, white tents, that cool the air. I saw a river with green banks.”

“White tents,” Marak said, drawing the Ila's dangerous attention to himself, “and as much water as anyone wants. Craftsmen. Farmers. All that survived to reach the tower are in that camp. Luz wants you to come there before it's too late. She wants everyone to come.”

The Ila looked straight at her, eyes burning in her white and angry face.

“Listen to him,” Norit said—-
Luz
said. “You know.
You know, Ila Jao.
There's nothing to gain. Your war is
lost
. You knew it was lost when you came here, five hundred years ago, and you knew it was hopeless when your makers couldn't defeat what we loosed. You couldn't cure the mad. You tried, but you couldn't, so you sent to know what we are. But it's not hopeless. I'm offering you a refuge from what you've brought on yourself.”

“Take that woman out!” the Ila said, and the guards moved at once.

Norit held up her hand abruptly, as yet untouched, and turned, and walked of her own accord toward the curtain.

There she stopped, faltered,
fell
like the dead.

Marak started to move without thinking. But guards had reached Norit, and felt of her pulse.

“Fainted,” a guard said.

“It's Luz in her,” Marak, appealing to the Ila, for fear what consequences Norit might suffer. “The body is only Norit. She's an honest woman, a shy, gentle woman . . . she'd never say what Luz said. She wouldn't know how to answer you.”

“And are you Marak, and only Marak?”

He had never wondered. It was a terrifying question. “As far as I know.”

“And this?” The Ila gave a wave of her gloved hand toward Hati.

“Hati. An'i Keran. She knows the desert. She knows the way to the tower as well as I do. She helped me reach Oburan.” He had no idea of the Ila's motives in asking, or her intentions afterward, and had no idea whether it was better for Hati to be important or invisible, but now he had no choice. “Out on the pans we've seen two storms on the way. Stars fall in their thousands. We passed places where they make pits in the sand. We saw rain, on the Lakht. Luz said the world would change. And it's changing all around us. The earth is shaking. The storms are like nothing anyone's ever seen.” He had trouble thinking of the wreckage the other side of these canvas walls, but it was all around her: how could she be ignorant of it? “She says we're almost out of time. That something worse is coming.”

“I trust all the things you saw on your journey are in the au'it's book,” the Ila said with a glance at their au'it, and the au'it nodded slightly. “So. I will read them at my leisure.”

“Everything we saw in our visions,” Marak said, desperate for time to make his point, such as it was, “everything we saw came true. All the mad had the same visions. And now we three, Hati and I, and Norit, as far as I know, we're the only ones who see visions beyond those. We see rings of fire, spreading over villages. But if we come to the tower, Luz claims she can keep everyone safe there. I don't know what the truth is. I don't know who's right. I told you I'd come back, and I came back, and I've made my report, such as I can. I don't
know
what's right.”

“Come here,” the Ila said, beckoning, and beckoning twice called him forward, and forward again, and a third time, until he stood face-to-face with her.

The earth shivered under them, a little tremor, the like of which happened hourly.

“Lay your hand here,” the Ila said, and indicated the arm of her chair.

He by no means trusted he would be safe to do that. Yet he did. Within her place of power, the Ila's directions were the only safety at all.

“Captain,” she said, holding out her hand to the side. “Your knife.”

Marak did not move. He looked at her eye to eye as she held out her hand and Memnanan gave her his belt-knife.

She clenched her fist and stabbed the blade down into his forearm. She was not adept with weapons. The point hung on the gauze and turned, though it scored his arm deeply enough. Blood ran down and divided at his wrist, thin streams that dripped down past the arm of the chair.

It was a demonstration of her power to harm, perhaps. He demonstrated his own, not to flinch from her threats.

“You may move back,” the Ila said then calmly, and handed the knife to the captain.

Marak stepped back, blood dripping off his fingers. He disdained to stop it. Knowing it was a test or a chastisement, he knew he had had worse, and stared still straight into the Ila's face, as she stared at him, a long, long while.

Then the Ila dismissed them all with an abrupt gesture. “Care for them! Give them my hospitality. —Don't bandage the wound.”

That was a strange exclusion, Marak thought, relieved and stunned. He bowed and, with Hati, went where Memnanan directed, the rings singing on the rods, and singing again as the servants drew the curtains together again. Guards carried Norit and brought her with them, unconscious, unaware, unresponsive . . . but safe.

The servants directed them into a narrow chamber still within the huge tent, a curtained area warmly lit with lamps.

There Memnanan drew the curtain aside, and the Ila's women-servants attended Norit, and wished them to separate, the guards urging Marak alone to a second chamber, but not far. It was apparently for modesty, and he did not resist.

Memnanan stayed with him there a moment, as men-servants stripped off the gauze robes. “Did you lie?” Memnanan asked him when he stood naked.

“No,” he said. The servants turned back the carpets, laying bare the sand beneath, and moved him onto that spot beginning to wash him with sodden, herb-smelling towels. One overwhelming question had fallen unasked in Norit's assault on the court; and to ask it might bring down consequences as yet unconnected—but not to ask might lose him all chance to ask. The Ila's honesty was in question; so was Luz's.

And he cast back his one measure of truth, and promises kept. “I didn't lie, in there.—The Ila promised my mother's safety, and my sister's, if I came back. Is that true? Is my mother here? Is my sister?”

The slaves had stopped their work. Memnanan studied him and bit his lip. “What if I said she was here?” Memnanan was no fool, to give away the Ila's points in advance; but he was a decent man, Marak had sensed it once, and he believed it now, in the silent war in Memnanan's eyes.

“I'd believe you if you said so,” Marak said.

Memnanan changed the subject. “Your arm has stopped bleeding.”

It was an inconsequence. Marak bent it, glanced at it, expecting what he would see, that the wound was dry before the blood was. The area had grown warm with fever, and would swell.

He had denied all his life that he more than healed quickly, foolish notion. Now he knew that what lived in his blood would keep him alive through far worse than this. It might be a disadvantage.

“The Ila will hear you again,” Memnanan said in leaving, “I'm relatively sure of it. Ask
her
about your relatives.”

“The people out there . . .” Marak began, and Memnanan stayed from letting the curtain drop between them. “Did she call them in, or did they come?”

“They came. When the misfortunes began, where else would they go, but Oburan? One village passed another on the road, from farthest west inward, from south to north. So the trickle became a flood. They've left most of their harvest in the fields. They've eaten most of their provisions. Now they deplete Oburan's.” Memnanan divulged his own worries, the coming, undeniable privations. “We can hold out a while. This tower you saw . . . this green-sided river . . . can it supply all the people in the world?”

“I don't know how many. It supplies a good many already. If she hears me,” he said. “If she listens, then we have that much chance. If she asks you, tell her that. I could have stayed there in safety. I chose to come here, for my mother's sake, to rescue her, and anyone else I could.”

“And the Ila?”

“I made her a promise. I'm here. I came back.”

“So you did.”

“Is she disposed to listen?”

“The earth shook. Everything came down. I don't know what her disposition is. But you were right in what you guessed. And the woman said far too much.” Memnanan had already told him far too much, himself. Memnanan let the curtain drop and left him to the servants.

“Omi,” they said, and came with their basin, and poured clear water over him, and washed his hair.

“I can wash myself!” came from beyond a curtain, and his spirits lifted. Hati was not threatened, or bullied. Hati was Hati.

It was Norit he could not account for. He knew that Memnanan was right, that Norit was deeply at risk. He saw no way to help her, more than he had already done, and had a slashed arm to show for it. He could argue with the Ila for Norit's life. He might have his way, if the Ila wanted the things he had to offer.

But what stopped Luz? What prevented Luz making things worse?

The servants dried his hair, dried him, gave him a sleeping robe of fine blue cloth, and drew back the curtain. Hati was there, damp and not yet robed, water a fine sheen on her dark skin. She cast a burning glance at the female servants, snatched the robe from their hands, and slipped it on, disdaining to fasten it.

The servants ebbed out of the chamber, through the curtains as she came to him. Hati wished to see his arm, which had already grown fevered and swollen.

“It will heal,” he said. But Hati knew that, no less than he. “Where's Norit?” He failed to see her anywhere about the chamber.

“They took her away,” Hati said. “I don't know where.”