“They gave us food and water at no cost,” Tofi exalted their hosts, “and these clothes, and as much food as we want, they give. Eat. Take anything.” Tofi took bread from the table to show them. “Whatever we eat, they give us more. It never spoils. No vermin come here.”

“How many of these strangers have you seen?” he asked Tofi.

“That bring the food and visit us? People like us. They come from all over, from Pori, too, and from the tribes. Malin and Kassan and Foragi are here, did you see them? They don’t remember how they found this place. They waked up here, under a white tent.”

All the mad. All those that wandered away from the villages, fed, and clothed, and kept in safety-if they survived the desert.

He was overwhelmed, surfeited with this babble of good fortune.

Hati and Norit were beset with questions and details of the wealth here, the au’it sat down and opened her book to record these wonders, and in a sudden need for escape, Marak walked out into the heat of the sun, where their beasts sat, well fed and supplied, by a pool of water that had no right to be where it was.

The sun warmed his shoulders. He walked where a multitude of feet had tracked the sand, and he climbed the sandstone slant to gain a vantage and a breath of the world’s own sun-heated wind.

He had to ask himself and his demons what he ought to do with Luz’s warning, what was truth, what was safe, what was a mirage that killed the fools that believed it… that was what he sought, simple solitude, on the safety of an often-used trail.

But as he climbed he saw a gleam of white, and a wider and a wider gleam, the other side of the rise on which the tower sat. A city of white canvas spread across the sand.

White tents. Shelter. People. A green-bordered river of water, shaded by palms.

He sat down. He did not even remember doing it. He simply sat and stared at that sight with shock spreading through him like the cold out of the tents.

Steps sounded behind them, so ordinary he failed to question them. Hati came and sat down, and after that Norit, and then the au’it, too, came and sat down by him. None of them spoke for a long time, looking at that sight, that clear evidence that Luz at least had told a part of the truth.