But not for him. He had a mother, a sister, a father, all resting on his promise to come back. He had the memory of villages, and the people he had known, and no few he had grown up with. And he had the word of a stranger and the promise of an enemy, and he was mad as the rest, but he knew what he could live with, and what he could not, right or wrong or fair to Hati, he could not stay.

“I don’t trust strangers,” Hati said. “I don’t trust her.”

“I have to go back. I’m supposed to rescue the god-cursed Ila.” He had no clear notion in his mind what he would do, or how .he would do it, except to retrace their steps, walk into the Ila’s hall, and say a woman crazier than he was had sent a message that would not make her happy. Mad as it was, the urgency loomed taller and taller, like the vision of the tower. “I have to. I have to. I said I would come back. She said she’d save my mother and my sister for a year. I don’t know if she’ll keep her word. But I know I have to.”

Hati’s embrace tightened, hard, harder. “Do you know a way out of this place?” she asked.

He thought he knew. It was a sense of direction, like knowing where north was, if he wondered about it. There was a door in the other direction, and he turned toward it, one arm around Hati, the other about Norit. He thought about the au’it, and whether she might join them on their way out, and at a crossing of the next hall, the au’it came out, in her own red robes, but clean, head to toe. She held her book and her writing kit as she joined them, and walked with them quickly as far as the end of the hallway, and another door.

That door opened without warning. Ian was behind it.

“Are you looking for the door?” Ian asked. “Follow me.”

It was not a welcome presence. But Ian led them to the next door, and touched it to make it open.

Outside was the world and the sunlight, a pale blue sky, and red dunes and sandstone, going on forever.

Outside was a camp of white tents at the foot of the glass-strewn hill on which the tower stood.

Marak paid no attention to Ian as they left, and Ian said no further word to them. Marak heard the door shut behind them, and he felt the hot familiar wind in their faces as they walked down to the tents, faster and faster, with mounting desire to be there, and not at the tower.