And for the first time he added up the fact that all the mad had heard the same voices, their own, and seen the same visions, at the same time, and so had Norit, on the way. But now he became keenly aware of what they had begun to believe beneath the surface and never saying it: that Norit had special warnings, and special visions, and that Luz’s constant possession of her was different than what afflicted them.

In a way he had known it for days; he had known it when Norit had warned them of a storm he had had no idea was coming. He had known it when Norit ran mad, alone, under the sky.

It was not that he was hardheaded and failed to listen; it was not that he and Hati were too resistant to the voices—but that Norit’s voice was a special one, and that it had begun to be a special voice in the tower, where he and Hati and Norit had spent an amount of time they had never added up.

Now he believed Luz had done something special to Norit. She had done something special, and cruel, and Norit was not the same as she had been. Norit heard things constantly, and that flow of images that had once united the mad did not reach them… only Norit, who suffered.

There was nothing they could do for her but find this lost person named Lelie. Norit had asked for that. But whether Norit would even continue to care for this Lelie, there was no promise. Every time he made an effort to get her back from Luz, Luz’s possession of her was fiercer and harder when it set in.

He looked at Hati, riding near them, and found no better answer. He no longer knew what to do: but he knew that he had no wish to end that possession entirely—their lives depended on it. Even Norit’s life depended on Luz’s voice continuing.

And all night long the star-fall continued, obscured at times by threads of cloud, dark strips in the heavens. By morning those strips glowed pink, then faint purple, then white.

Even by this morning, there was no word from the young man they had sent down the line. Marak tried to imagine how far that was, and whether in fact it did extend all the way back to the holy city.

But now he had to reckon that perhaps the young man had come to grief… nothing to do with vermin or bandits. The Ila’s men were not loved in the villages.