They had arrived on the ascent by midmorning, as they hoped. They dismounted and led their beasts up, and climbed with caution: whoever had made the fragile path down off the Lakht, likely Pori’s hunters, had somewhat compacted the fragile rock, and their own passage had compacted it further, but it was steep and narrow, no place for a misstep, and one beast tended to rush up behind the beast higher up.

The slaves below, hindmost, were not helping. “Fools!” Tofi called out, looking back, and risked his life, descending the trail side to hold back one beast until the one ahead had vacated a foothold for it.

They made the crest. They were on the Lakht. Tofi, bedraggled and dusty, came up last. “I said get before them!” Tofi shouted at the slaves. “I said hold the line back! I said be a gateway, not an open door! Shall I free fools? How will you make a living in the world?”

The slaves were chagrined, and hung their heads; but it came to Marak with sudden force that Tofi believed the world would go on, and that he himself went on believing it, at heart… while if Luz was right there would be no continuation, no order of life such as they knew-

If Luz was right. If she was, then Tofi’s promises were a mirage, Tofi’s promises, his beliefs… all mirage, all blind faith. After a rest full of nightmares and visions it came to him like a blow to the heart, and for an instant the question devastated him: How will you make a living in the world?

How would they deal with a changed desert, and this enemy, and Luz’s protection.

What would he say to the Ila if he could reach her?

Is Luz telling the truth? That would be the first thing.

To find his mother and get her into his hands… that was where he was going.

But for what? For what better life?

He sat down on a convenient flat shelf of rock, and tried not to find deeper answers. He had to rest; they all had to rest. The beasts were weak-legged from the climb, and sat down under their burdens. It was no time for prolonged thinking. It could only lead to despair.

“We should pitch the tent,” Tofi came to him to say. “We have plenty of water, no lack of food. The sun is not quite at noon, but it makes sense to stop.”

Did it? Did it, when Luz said it might already be too late to carry their message? Despair and urgency wavered back and forth in his brain like chill and fever, an approaching panic.

There was no reason to lame the beasts or drive themselves to collapse: that was no help to them.