Hup, and the sand-colored beasts rose on their long legs, shook out their lofty necks, and began to move, led by the grizzled old white one, their half-lidded eyes deprecating alike the world’s folly and the weakness of men.

The Ila’s men set their beasts walking, and Marak walked. The sane shepherded the mad.

The Lakht stretched on and on, masking its traps in distance and illusion, the shimmer of false water and the movement of ghostly vermin.

In the passage of hours, again, under a fading sky, Marak saw visions. Towers built themselves in fire and wove themselves in symbols. A cave gaped and glowed with suns equally spaced, marching on forever.

He ignored them and saw the sand through them. He looked at the horizon, where at last the sun sank, where the true holy city might rise before the next day.

Marak, the demons said, having long ago learned his name. Marak, Marak, Marak.

The demon voices were sometimes like women’s voices, sometimes like men’s. He ignored them as he had learned to do all through his thirty years, and gave his attention to the sounds of men and beasts walking ahead of and behind him.

Over it all came the high, thin wail of the wife from Tarsa.

“Damned,” the wife cried at the gathering night, “damned, damned, damned, the Ila save us all! We’re all damned!”

The sun went down in flame and spread a last illusory glow across the land, like gilded water.

“I am not mad!” the wife cried as she rode. “I am not mad!”

So she said.

And when the night had fallen and cooled the air of the Lakht to a gentler warmth she sang as she rode to a husband who no longer wanted her. “Let us love,” she sang, “let us look to the moons for light and make us a house of stone. Let us dig us a well for our lives and plant green vines and melons. Let us make us a child and dance with the children of our children. Let us lie down in our bed and sleep the long sleep and dream the long dream. Let us love.”

And so the tune went round again, round and round and round, a litany, as feet grew worn and legs cramped.

“Let us love,” the potter cried at the heavens, “let us love, let us love. Oh, mother, mother, mother! Where is my mother?”

And another, an orchardman, “You never had a mother! Be still!”

The boy from Tijanan heard nothing. He walked, hugging himself, waving his arms outward and slapping himself as he walked, complaining about burning fires.

Marak said nothing. The voices sang in his head, too, but nothing of love or dancing or fires. His voices said words to him and his skin went hot and cold while the lines made pictures against the night.