The vision of rocks and spheres followed, one crashing into the other, the sphere with fire at the point of damage, and a spreading ring of disturbance, like a stone cast into a fountain.

“Make the beasts sit down,” Norit said.

“Why?” he asked.

Norit said nothing. She only sat down, herself, her legs tucked up at a slant to avoid the heat of the sand.

Marak looked at Hati, both his temper and his dread reaching a near boil. They were so close to reaching Oburan: they were on the very trail to the holy city, and was there another calamity?

“Can she not explain, damn her?” he muttered under his breath, meaning Luz, and complaining to no one but the wind and the desert heat. “Do we need the tents? Is a star about to fall on top of us?” They were sitting next to Besh Karat, which indubitably housed vermin… he hoped they were small and timid vermin, nothing larger.

The vision came to him, the ring of fire, so vividly it blotted out the sun. He ground his hands against his eyes, fighting for a sight of Osan’s rein as he tried to grasp it, and shook his head to clear it.

He settled Osan, and if Osan sat, Hati’s beast and the au’it’s settled, complaining. The pack beasts were always willing to settle, in hopes of shedding their packs for a rest, but here they were uneasy, and circled and made trouble, two of them wanting to stray off from their accustomed order. But they settled.

Tofi and the freedmen did not then unpack the baggage, and the beasts complained about that, squalling and rumbling in the heat.

So they sat, all of them, like fools, and waited for this danger, and they waited, and the unwilling beasts shifted their limbs under them and complained noisily, with no relief from the packs or the saddles in the sweltering heat. Tails whipped, beat the sand, thump.

Suddenly the beshti set to bawling again.

The earth shook itself like a beast twitching its skin, a hard shaking. Tofi’s riding beast, which had started to rise in panic, plumped back down again, unhurt, but rolling its eyes and bellowing to the heavens.

Norit sat with her hands in her lap, combing out a tassel on her headcloth.

The tremor passed. Tofi swore and hid his face in his hand, looked up again as if to be sure it was over.

Norit showed no inclination to move.

“Shall we go?” he asked Norit.

“Not yet,” Norit said. She stared into nothing, the tassel forgotten.

The sphere fell against the greater sphere. The ring of disturbance went out. Marak saw it. He knew Hati did. Hati’s hands were clenched on her quirt until the knuckles stood white.

The au’it, having endured one shaking, grimly gripped her book and her ink-cake, and wrote, braced for more disturbance.

Time passed.