“Wait, wait!” Tofi cried, waving his arms. “What’s wrong with her? What’s wrong with any of you?”

Marak knew his act was as mad as Norit’s. The pain reached his ears and his skull and hammered at him. He spun about, arms wide, looking up at the eye of heaven as if he flew, as if he were bound to nothing but the blue-white air, as if he were caught between the hammer of the sun and the anvil of the earth. He would fling himself down and die before he became utterly mad. He would cast himself off the cliffs before he became a mindless slave to the voices.

“You’ll have nothing!” he shouted at the heavens. “You’ll have nothing from me!”

The pain in his head became pain in his chest and in his spine and in his gut, and the noise in his ears became a light like the sun. He spun and he spun and he spun until he fell.

He lay on the sun-scorched sand, whole, and unbroken.

Luz said, into his ears: Listen to me. Lives are at risk. It’s already begun. Someone will see to Pori. Go north, away from danger.

Hati dragged his head into her lap, shading him with her body, touching his face with precious water. “Marak. Marak. Wake up. Wake up! Don’t leave us.”

Don’t leave us, don’t leave us, don’t leave us.

“Marak,” Hati said, and fear was in her voice, where fear was a stranger. “Marak, wake up. Do you hear me?”

He could not leave Hati lost. He could not leave Norit possessed of devils, with no one to understand her.

He drew several great breaths and slowly blinked at Hati’s shadowed face, against the sunglare. He saw Norit beyond her shoulder, a plain, sweet, woman’s face dim to his eyes, wild-haired and bareheaded, haloed by the sun.

He reached back with his hands and pushed himself up, gathered a knee under him with Hati’s help and then Tofi’s.

He looked dazedly at Norit, wondering if he was looking at the same time at Luz. But if it was not also Norit within that body, he reasoned, then Norit had no other place to be, and whatever she carried within her, he could not turn on her. He had no power to drive out his own vision. He certainly had no power to condemn hers.

“We will pass by Pori,” he said, to Tofi, to Hati, to whoever cared. In that promise, the pressure in his head eased, and Luz grew silent. Tofi had a frightened look.

He staggered upright, staggered as he walked toward the tent to continue ripping up the stakes, still dizzied by his looking at the sun. He was not accustomed to defeat. He burned from the shame of his actions.

And for what, he asked himself, for what reason?