He saw lines of fire making structures. He saw a beacon flashing in the sky, illusion like the rest. He knew that it was illusion, but in the dark the visions easily became more real than the stars above them.

Pain followed. He felt about him, blind, his fingers finding only wind-smoothed stones.

He forgot where he was. He had fallen. The world he occupied was mapless. He was on the Lakht. But it might be at the head of his men. It might be in war. They might be raiding a caravan, and he could not remember.

A hand inserted itself into his collar and dragged at him, and after that something passed about his neck, a collar, a rope, he realized, to guide the mad.

They pulled, and he walked, quite, quite blind. He heard his father’s voice saying to his mother that she should not speak to the dead.

He heard his father say that she must have gotten him with some no-caste: he could not be Tain’s son. Clearly his mother was a whore.

The pain in his knees was dull and distant. Tugs of the rope both pulled him off-balance and reminded him of left and right. He took it meekly, for simple guidance, that he could not walk aside from the column. It was important to stay with the caravan. It was important to be quiet and cooperative. He had something yet to do, a reason to go on walking.

After a passage of time they rested. He was blind, and they gave him bitter beer to drink, the first beer he had had on this trek. It conjured harvest evenings, the yellow, yellow straw, laughter in the fields. It conjured campfires and campaign, and a man lying bandaged and dying of his wounds. They had had such beer in the Lakht, three years ago. They had captured a wagonload of beer and behaved like boys.

Here we are, they had laughed, where the ships came down. Shall we look for ships in the desert?

“Here we are!” they had shouted at the sky, blasphemed, and waved their arms as if they would beckon down heavenly watchers.

They had roused up a band of the Ila’s men by mischance and fought them, drunk as they were. His father had hit him when he found out, but not been greatly angry, since none of them had died, and they had killed the Ila’s men.

Hup-hup-hup, the word came.

The wife was dully compliant now, having had a double ration of beer, and they set her on her feet and had her walk.

The potter, equally drunk, asked after his mother. “Be still,” others of the mad shouted at him, and the Ila’s men laughed and rode down on either side of the potter, picked him up by either arm, and carried him far ahead of them, where they dropped him.