Other houses, other villages, might have killed the afflicted quietly, so as not to have any madmen left to turn over to the Ila. The caravan of the damned had stopped at villages where no one confessed.
The wife of Tarsa wailed and prayed in the grip of her visions. “Look!” she would cry. “The city! The holy tower is here!” and at other times, “Gods bless the Ila,” as if the soldiers would have pity if she praised the tyrant.
“The devil is in the east!” the tanner shrieked, and that set off the old man, who asked after his wife, and cried that he had fathered devils who betrayed him.
Sweat trickled down Marak’s face and down his neck and under his arms, drying on his ribs. A man’s body betrayed him in the heat. It readily gave up its water. In sorrow, it gave up even more.
Somewhere above the sky had been a land rich in life, where all men were born.
Somewhere up there above the burning blue had been a paradise of water, a pool that never stopped flowing.
That place might have been in the heavens, as the priests said, but the heavens during this march hinted nothing of paradise, only a cold light of stars by night and the burning eye of the sun by day.
They said, the priests did, that when the First Descended had come down onto the Lakht, the Ila, undying and eternal, had divided men from beasts, and beasts from vermin: afterward the world and its order was ruled by the god, the single god, and administered by the Ila and her priests.
Marak, like his father, like most of the west, had rejected that belief. There was no help in the heavens, no reliance on priests on earth, or on the god’s viceroy. But having fought that authority and having come to this, there was nothing to do with his life on earth except, perhaps, to end it, pouring out the life he owned like water, until the desert drank it dry, until the vermin of the sky swarmed thick. A man died in the day and nothing was left of him by sundown but the bones.
But he had resolved he would see the holy city again. They were within a day’s walk. He had come this far out of sheer persistence, knowing he had nothing else to do but die, and seeing what the next day would bring had thus far been better than not seeing it at all.
Now with the illusion of the city in his eyes, he recalled that he might not only see the city, but that the Ila herself had desired to see the mad. And thinking that, he foresaw he might live long enough to find the Ila’s throat within his hands. Therewas an ambition.
There was the way to win his father’s gratitude, once his father heard that his son had broken the Ila’s immortal neck. His father’s son was mad and outcast. But he was not helpless.
{East, the world tilted. Tilted and swung like a compass in a bowl.}
The whole plateau heaved and slanted, and the mad, all at once, set their arms to hold themselves from falling.
But the wife suddenly leapt up, shrieked, and began to run. “The city!” she cried. “Oburan! Ila save us!”
Two of the Ila’s men laughed at her flight, then got up and pursued as the mad all righted themselves and stared, and the religious babbled about devils.
“The devils are in the Ila’s court!” others jeered, being men of the west, abjori at heart. “And the Ila herself the chief of them!”
“Water is there!” the potter cried. “Water free for the drinking.”
A few of the mad rose up, cheering the wife on, or decrying blasphemy, but the guards beat them back to the sand. No one else stirred in the heat. The mad watched the wife as she sped, feet kicking up small puffs of the red powder sand.
Might she escape? Marak asked himself in mild curiosity, sitting quietly the while. There were cliffs and falls amid the dunes.
Might she break her neck or burst her heart? Others then might find the courage to make an effort. He tested his own mind and sought that courage in himself. But now that he had thought of it, now that the city was imminent, the thought of the Ila’s throat held him wholly entranced.
The Ila’s men ran faster at the last. The contest became foredoomed and most in the caravan lost interest. Most sprawled back on the sand and rested, some with aching heads. But Marak watched in curiosity as the wife eluded the men.
She had wit. And purpose.
He was faintly disappointed as, shortly after that, the Ila’s men overhauled the soft-skinned woman and wrestled her, flailing and screaming, to the sand. He had seen it before, the last burst of life from the mad, then a slow descent into despair and apathy, then death.
They wrapped her in her aifad, using it like a rope, and carried her back despite her screaming and struggling. Her braids dragged the ground and whipped in her fury. Bare legs flailed the air. They almost dropped her. She had more courage than most, this wife from Tarsa, and surprising determination.
{East, the demons said again. East, east, east.}
But a man sitting might resist the world tilting as it did. He had learned that.
“Lelie!” the wife cried. It was a woman’s name. It might be sister or daughter or mother. He had no idea.
They wrapped the wife in more substantial cords, tied her against one of the two strong tent poles that upheld Marak’s tent, and left her babbling and shrieking, “Lelie, Lelie.”
In the guards’ disinterest, in her own helplessness, the wife’s struggles grew weaker, but the shouting went on intermittently, until her voice cracked and went hoarse. Her fight lasted until her struggling dwindled to mere twitches against the cords, and her face ran with wasteful tears.
A potter from the lowlands claimed he saw angels on the cliff, claimed it quite calmly, though there was no cliff in sight.
The lad from Tijanan, at the edge of the shade, rocked obsessively for an hour and banged his head bloody against the stony sand.
Toward afternoon the caravan master and his men doled out cold rations; the wife from Tarsa and the boy were both too distraught to eat, but the caravan master beat them with his quirt and the boy ate. The wife they forced to drink, holding her nose until she swallowed, and after a while, the caravanners holding her arms, she swallowed water on her own. It was a sort of kindness. They might have left her to walk thirsty, knowing they would still deliver her to the city by next afternoon, but the sickness came rapidly on the ones who would not drink. Their bodies poured out less and less water, and they died, cheating the Ila of whatever she wished. So the guards assured that they would have no fault in the matter.
Marak made no such rebellion against his fate. He took a little water in his mouth, broke the caked provision with two free hands, and ate, slowly, observing the guards’ diminishing battles with the wife, wondering would she yet die before they reached Oburan, and be free.
The mad had proliferated in the west, in the hills, for thirty years, and now rumor said the Ila had had a dream of them, and wished to purify the land once for all of their affliction.
He feared his father might not rule long, and not alone for the shame and the disappointment of his son. Men would not follow the mad, and through him, the taint had come on the house. To cast blame on the woman who had borne him was his father’s only salvation with his men, and Marak understood that, but it was likewise his mother’s ruin, and there was no refuge for her if she had not gone to the Haga.
Perhaps she had gone there. Perhaps she was there by now. Perhaps she had found some well, and walked on, and told the Haga only that she was divorced from her husband. A Haga wife had that right, absolute and unquestioned. Perhaps she could forget her son.
But he doubted it. She was stubborn, was Kaptai; she was proud; and she was a devoted mother. Could she lie, regarding her son? Could she leave her daughter, having had her son led away in shame?
Only one thing he could do, one thing he could do to bring an end of questions, one thing he could do to redeem his disgrace: kill the Ila.
One thing he could do to win his father’s forgiveness of his mother, and win his sister’s honor, and her life, and her chance of happiness and marriage and children.