The Ila stared, stone-faced. “I can guess.”

“Omatbarat. Do you know that name?”

“I know it. I was not there.”

“As we know. You were not there.”

“Yet they come here to destroy the world.”

“To reshape it. To stir the pot and be sure that what arises here out of the soil of this world is shaped by this world, not by you, Ila Jao. When we say to them that the makers we loose have had their way with the world, then, then the armistice will hold and the ondat will admit their war is over. But until that day a handful of us of your own kind have set ourselves down here, damned ourselves along with you, for your fathers’ sins, Ila Jao. We bear you personally no ill will. More than that. We can save you, if you aren’t a fool.”

There was a heartbeat of terrible silence.

The Ila’s white hand lifted abruptly, made a gesture for silence as a hushed murmur began among the officers. Pens made rapid strokes—ceased, as the aui’it stopped, both of them.

“And the other madmen?” the Ila asked.

“Remained at the tower,” Norit said.

“Who is this woman?” the Ila asked aside, of Memnanan, and, looking straight at Hati: “Are you a prophet, too?”

“No,” Hati said. “No, Ila. But I saw the tower. I saw tents all around it, white tents, that cool the air. I saw a river with green banks.”

“White tents,” Marak said, drawing the Ila’s dangerous attention to himself, “and as much water as anyone wants. Craftsmen. Farmers. All that survived to reach the tower are in that camp. Luz wants you to come there before it’s too late. She wants everyone to come.”

The Ila looked straight at her, eyes burning in her white and angry face.

“Listen to him,” Norit said—Luz said. “You know. You know, Ila Jao. There’s nothing to gain. Your war is lost. You knew it was lost when you came here, five hundred years ago, and you knew it was hopeless when your makers couldn’t defeat what we loosed. You couldn’t cure the mad. You tried, but you couldn’t, so you sent to know what we are. But it’s not hopeless. I’m offering you a refuge from what you’ve brought on yourself.”

“Take that woman out!” the Ila said, and the guards moved at once.

Norit held up her hand abruptly, as yet untouched, and turned, and walked of her own accord toward the curtain.

There she stopped, faltered, fell like the dead.

Marak started to move without thinking. But guards had reached Norit, and felt of her pulse.

“Fainted,” a guard said.