Marak climbed the steep sand to the ridge and looked back on wealth greater than he had ever imagined, on green-edged water, on the white, cooling tents, hundreds of them, and hundreds of individuals ripped up from their lives and set down in paradise… but it was a paradise without loved ones. All the villages, all the city, all the tribes had no warning, no knowledge of Luz and this place.

The hammer will fall, he heard in his head, and all at once the vision came, the rock and the shining sphere.

Marak, it said. Marak, Marak, the old refrain, the old restlessness. Peace here had no comfort.

“I have to go back,” he said to Hati and to Norit and the au’it. “The madness won’t stop for me. I have to go. I have to report what’s here. My mother and sister, that man’s wife… who’s to tell them, if I don’t go?”

He walked away down the slope, recklessly downhill toward their own camp, and under the white tent, Hati and Norit with him still trying to follow: he could not shake them with a declaration of madness. The au’it, too, fell in with them as they went, a small force that knifed straight to the heart of their small camp. He expected to be alone. He wanted to be alone in his folly.

Tofi was there, with a costly cup in his hand, and lifted it cheerfully. “So you’ve seen the sight from the ridge. They say we’ll join the rest. Perhaps we were waiting for you. Sit, sit down and drink.”

“I need two beasts,” Marak said, “mine, and two pack beasts, irons, and canvas.” He was more and more sure of his choice, however much it hurt. He had led the mad and the lost to safety; and with the alarm Luz had set seething inside him, and the voices dinning in his ears, he could not stay here, grazing on provided fodder like the beasts. He was never made to sit and fold his hands and ask for sweet fruit to land on the table.

But going? Luz wanted his unquestioning acceptance, his absolute belief; and his own father had never gotten that from him. Who were Ian and Luz to ask it?

The cup had stopped in its course from Tofi’s lips, and hesitated: Tofi lowered it to his knee, immediately sober. “Where are you going?”

“Back,” he said, and Tofi looked dismayed. “Back to Oburan.”

“With no guide?”

“I know the stars,” he said. “I can find my way.” He was aware of Hati and Norit, standing near him, but they said nothing. He left Tofi, having informed him what he was taking, and went out to find Osan among the idle beasts.

He led him back toward the place where the saddles were stacked, supported on their untouched baggage.