“It’s Tofi,” Marak said. He knew the beasts that sat comfortably by those strange white tents: he knew the baggage piled up there. Two tents were pitched, white and looking as if they could have nothing to do with the red rock and the dust.

And from under those open-sided tents the mad came out to welcome them, all the madmen clothed in gauze robes the same as they were, waving, happy, cheering their safe return.

“Malin,” Hati said in astonishment as they came down the hill. “That’s Malin.” Kassan and Foragi were there, too, the ex-soldiers. They had made it here, against all expectation.

Tofi came, running. His robe was green-striped brown, a blue aifad, his own, as every stitch about him was his own: the others, destitute, took gifts, but Tofi put on his best, and Marak was glad at the sight of him.

“They said you were well,” Tofi said, as they met and clasped hands. “But I said they should let you go. This strange man came to us. There’s plenty of water here, and people, people from all over…”

The others clustered around them as they came downhill. “Where have you been?” the questions ran. “What have you seen?”

“Lights,” Marak found to say to them. “A woman.” There were the new visions, and if the other madmen shared them there was no hint of it. The faces were happy, and their enthusiasm carried them along, all talking at once.

“We have these clothes, and no end of food and water.”

“We can wash. We can even wash in it.”

“And fruits,” the orchardman put in, “with not a blemish on them.”

“The tents cool the air,” the stonemason said. “This is the god’s paradise.”

They went down among those tents, in this babble of strangers and new clothes, and out from the shade under the white tents flowed an unnaturally cool air. Tables stood within the shade of one tent, the tent wholly devoted to that purpose, and on those tables sat a ravaged wealth of food.

Wealth and water had poured out on the madmen, the rejected of the world. Their visions had brought them only good, that Marak saw. He looked back and up at the foot of the tower, which was so large, and which to his own observation held only Ian and Luz.

So much wealth to give away.

Paradise, the stonemason said.

But was it? Where was the orchard to provide this? There must be far more to all that tower than they had been allowed to see. There must be answers they had never had, questions they had not had the least idea how to ask.

And there were the visions, and the explanations that roused more questions. Death, was Luz’s message.