The potter sat down until the column overtook him, and then they roused him good-naturedly to his feet. The Ila’s men were in high spirits, with the city so near. They gave their sour beer to their prisoners and planned on better in the city that ran with water.

The old man fell down just before dawn and died, so it seemed: no one had touched him. The Ila’s men argued among themselves and decided they needed to bring the body along, all the same. It might draw vermin, and it was a danger. They had abandoned the others that had died. But the Ila would pay them a bounty for each madman, and they might argue a little gold even out of the body, proving there was one less of their kind in the world. The city was close. So was reward.

Marak ate what he was given at dawn, drank what water he was given. The sun came slipping over the Qarain’s saw-toothed ridge with morning, red fingers lancing across the powder sand, and the city that spread itself like a seam of light now was no mirage. Many of the mad cried out, but some, once fooled, disbelieved it in silence.

In the light and the trickery of the land Marak walked, walked, walked. The city grew nearer all day, the Lakht never seeming narrower, or the city nearer. The sun beat down, blinding, and now, having been generous, the Ila’s men turned impatient. They did not camp at noon, but pressed onward in the blazing sun.

The boy from Tijanan, whose sight was dimmer than the rest, at last saw the city the rest of them had seen for hours. “The holy city!” he shouted, and began to dance about, waving his arms, but the guards, out of humor, beat him, and shoved him ahead.

The boy, Pogi, walked, striking his head with his hands.

Marak likewise found in the city walls, however distant, an inspiration. He no longer trudged blindly. He walked as a man walks toward an encounter with his lifelong enemy, full of righteous anger.

“Look at him,” one of the Ila’s men said. “Does he know where he’s going? He’s as crazy as the boy.”

The boy kept his course when the world tilted. The boy never had moved to the visions that stirred the rest. His madness was of a different kind. He was innocent, if their madness was a crime.

Marak felt the world slide, but he kept his course as well. He looked at the walls and ignored the pitch.

They reached the stone-paved road. There was no escape at all, now, and now if never before the dullest must ask themselves what waited for them. But Marak knew. There was comfort in knowing there would be a reason for his dying. There was even a satisfaction in it, when all other purpose had left.