The aifad, too, was doubled gauze. He had no doubt how to put it up and wrap it if he chose. Clever, he thought, more than clever. He let the aifad lie on his shoulders, seeing no need of its protection in this sterile place.

Fine cloth, strange smells, burning lights… it was not sun that shone through the ceiling. It had several sources behind the translucent panels. This windowless smooth box of a room was beyond doubt a part of the cave of suns, within the tower. He was not far from where he had fallen and not far, he hoped, from Hati and Norit… not forgetting the au’it, either, who was little suited to indignities like this.

The door was shut, a plain brown panel, showing no more feature than the wall and no means to open it. It was cold like iron. He thought of the Ila’s metal doors, the power of them, and refused to be daunted. He had met this riddle before, and looked for a plate to touch.

“Ian!” he shouted at the door, and struck it with his hand.

The door opened. But it was Norit who appeared, Norit, dressed as he was, in the sand-colored gauze.

She simply stood there.

“Are you all right?” he asked. Her silence, her lack of joy, sent a chill through him. He embraced her as a man ought to greet his wife, and she acted as if he had never touched her before. Then she pushed away and went and sat down on the rumpled bed.

He found nothing right. His ears suddenly roared. His balance went uncertain, and Norit for a moment looked like an utter stranger to him.

The door was still open. He looked outside, down a metal hall like the vision of the cave.

But it was not the same hall: in small points, the number of suns and the number of doors, it was different than where they had been. They were about halfway down it, in a room to the side.

“It’s a hallway,” Norit whispered. “It’s just a hallway. That’s all it ever was, the cave of suns.”

“Have you seen all of this place? Have you met anyone? Who is the woman?”

“Luz.” Norit, who was a simple woman and a villager, never experienced in the outside, let alone the heart of mysteries. “Her name is Luz.”

“Where’s Hati?”

“I think she’s somewhere near.”

“Have you talked to them?”

“They talk to me,” Norit said, and shuddered. “I can hear them.”

He could not. There was only the roaring. “What is this place?”

A second shudder. Norit drew in a deep breath. “The woman named Luz. She told me her name is Luz. She wants me to be still, now, and let her talk.”