He wished he had stayed at the white tents. He wished he had told Hati to stay. He wished he had never undertaken this fool’s errand with Norit. There was no way out of this. There was no safety. He was a fool, and he had led them all to their destruction.

But he had lived before by imposing strict conditions on his death.

He would not die and leave Hati and Norit alone to face what came. That was his underlying resolve. He would not die without speaking to the Ila and relaying what she had asked to hear. That was his mission; and it was not that far. They would at least attempt the return, whatever the Ila did, and if, in the Ila’s wrath, he could not, they would go back to the tower. He would put the fear in Tofi and have him promise that.

Both these things he promised himself, while he roused Osan to his feet and turned Osan’s head toward the holy city.

Marak, Marak, Marak, the voices said to him. By noon, they passed bones that jutted up from the sand, a besha’s carcass already stripped by vermin. They came to others, four and five, and the bones of two men on the other side of the caravan track, but those bones were gnawed for the marrow and scattered, dug up by some creature after the sand had covered them. A scrap of canvas lay against a distant rock, looking as the wind had carried it and bunched it around the base of the boulder. It might have sheltered a man, but if it did, that man was dead by now, beyond their help. And the visions were now of fire, fire flowing like water from a broken spigot, fire coursing through land and eroding it.

They found other remnants of passage, as if bit by bit the whole caravan before them had come to grief, overwhelmed by the wind and the sand. Other debris was blown up against the rocks, far from their path, which now was as smooth as if no caravan had ever gone before them. When the desert destroyed, it both preserved and obliterated, even this close to the holy city.

But the day-early mirage that usually heralded the holy city failed. The sky was dirty yellow, and the air was cold. They doled out a little water to the beshti, and wondered what was ahead of them.

He contrived to speak to Tofi alone, riding side by side with him for a space, while Hati lagged back with the au’it. “I have a proposition for you,” he said. “We both have a promise to the Ila. But she may reward you. If things go badly for me, as they may, take Hati and Norit and go back as fast as you can.”

“To the tower?” Tofi asked.

“There,” Marak said. “There’s no safety here. You know that.”