There must be a fervor to carry them, a wild, a mad, an unstoppable urge: he stirred it, and knew what he did… he reminded them of their belongings. He hinted of movement. If the leaders denied him, the people themselves would be behind, pushing, demanding answers of their leaders, who had only one place to get answers. But it was a dangerous action. It could end in looting, in murder, in people trampled, or robbed, or stabbed and shot. Any leader knew it. Any leader who had not gone out to the summons would know he had to go, he had to find out the truth of their situation.

And it could not wait another day.

“You’re running a risk,” Memnanan said.

“They have to move,” he said. “They have no choice.” More people crowded in on them. Three times more he told them the same, before the rumor was running the camp on so many legs that their appearance was only confirmation, the outflow of authority, the imminence of movement.

The road poured them out of the camp and onto the vermin-hazard of the open sands, a fast-moving company of riders. A relatively few curious had come, the anxious, the frightened, representatives of households joining their leaders on the flat. They came in their hundreds out to the ridge, a mobbing not for blood but for news, and pressed outward in greater and greater numbers, hysteria in their faces. In some areas of the camp behind them, tents were already collapsing.

A ridge of sand along a face of rock: that was where Memnanan had ordered the priests and the aui’it to take their cargo of precious books, and that was where Memnanan had told the lords and the leaders to meet. The Ila’s men had gone out to protect the priests and the aui’it, and spread out across the ascent to prevent others.

The priests tried to make themselves heard, trying to take authority to themselves, crying out that the judgment was on the city.

“The god has sent this!” they shouted out to believers within hearing. “The god has decreed a judgment! Repent of your rebellion and your greed, and the Ila will intercede for you!”

“We have to silence that,” Marak said as they came within earshot. “They don’t know a damned thing, and they have no authority over anything but the books. Quiet them.”

Memnanan had a worried look, but he gave orders to his men as they reached the ridge: the guards went to the priests and ordered their leaders off the ridge, down at the base, where the carts were. There the junior priests had spread out and made a useful defense of themselves, a line of bedraggled white between them and the press of the crowd.