He freed his hand of Hati’s and pulled down the lap of his aifad to have a better look, to breathe the cold, strange air of this place. The air smelled faintly of water and herbs and things like asphalt.

There were doors, countless doors in this hall of light, if those seams meant anything; and there were doors at the end of the hall.

“Ian,” someone said, behind them.

Marak stopped; they all stopped, and turned.

A woman stood behind them, in the same sand-colored robes.

“Is this Marak?” she asked, and an unanticipated flood of heat rushed through Marak’s head, filling his face, his neck, his whole body with fever warmth. His pulse hammered in his temples, for no reason, none. The heat came from inside him, but what caused it was here, this place, this woman.

Marak, the voices said, echoed in his head, Marak Trin Tain, Hati Makri ani Keran, Norit Tath, and a nameless au’it belonging to the Ila.

The words went round and round and echoed from up above the suns.

All at once the hall went blank. The hard glass floor met Marak’s right knee. Norit and then Hati tumbled past his arms, and he tried to save them from the hard floor. They tumbled through his hands. Numb, he reached for his knife—toppled, simply toppled, hit the cold glassy floor with his shoulder and then with his head.

This was foolish, he thought in dismay. He had fallen over like a child that had forgotten how to walk. There was no cause for this weakness. Nothing had happened to him. There was no pain. He should not have fallen.

Marak, Marak, Marak, the voices said. Visions poured through his head. Voices numbed his ears with nonsense, roaring like the storm wind.

Of course he had weapons. Following Ian, coming in here, he had had at least that confidence.

But he knew now he had carried his defeat inside him, the same enslavement that had drawn him across the desert.

His father won this argument. Worthless, his father had said, and the suns burned and blinded his eyes, each with a curious white-hot pattern at its heart.

“Marak,” Ian said, and reached down a hand. He could no longer move. In jagged red lines the visions built towers, then letters beneath them, but he could make no sense of them. The letters streamed into the dark of the towers, and down twisting corridors, deep, and deeper and deeper by the moment.

“Fool,” his father said.

He had fallen at practice, in the dust of the courtyard. If he did not get up, his father would hit him. He tried. He kept trying.

Chapter Ten

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