From the tower, walkers went out across the desert.

Vision blurred, and caravans plied their trade, and all seemed ordinary.

“Do you see it?” he asked Norit, who had stayed seated on the bed. Her face said yes before she nodded and half hid her face in her hands.

“The tower of the Beykaskh,” the voice said.

He turned slowly and Norit turned, until they saw the tower again, set against the red, saw-toothed upthrust of the Qarain.

Had they come a circle? Was that where they had come, after all their journey? Were they within the Beykaskh?

That tower stood, and the vision rose up on wings like the birds of the air and turned until he swayed on his feet and Norit leapt up and held to him for her own balance.

The tower became domed, and they swooped down at the level of the sand, dizzied, and powerless to stop the rush of vision.

The tower put forth walls, and the walls rose up, and the dome rose, and the walls shone with the sun.

“From this,” their voice said, Luz said, “all else comes.”

The Beykaskh suddenly poured out the Mercy of the Ila, and the Mercy of the Ila formed the reed-rimmed pool as he had seen it, but subtly changed.

Creatures like the beshti, but not, drank there, and he saw into the water, and saw moving creatures, and saw spirals and dots and chains, and them composed of smaller and smaller chains, and finally of small structures, not like the structures he had seen built of fire.

These structures were dots, only dots of colors, and they changed and multiplied, and faded into larger things, and larger, and larger, and larger, threatening, and enveloping, until he saw the dots become small packets, and those packets become rows, and those rows become sheets, and those sheets become the skin of a man, and his ear, and his face, and his head and his body. He had no idea why this vision so terrified him, but the rapid shifts had made him both dizzy and afraid.

“These are the makers,” Luz said. “The Ila understands. Now you know what she knows. The makers flowed out into the pool and the beasts she had brought drank, and bred, and changed as the Ila directed. The beasts changed, and men changed to fit this land. Doesn’t your scripture say that she divided the beasts from the vermin?”

“I know nothing about it,” Marak retorted, because none of it made sense at all, and he cared nothing about it, only for escaping this place and taking Norit and Hati with him. It was not the act of friends to try to awe him with such a show. “I don’t believe in the scriptures or the priests. And if you want anything from us, open the doors. Bring the walls back. Give us Hati back. And the au’it.”