That was not ordinary. Nothing of the sort was ordinary.

And where was Kais Tain? Somewhere at the rear of the line of march, at least far enough back that a day of riding against the flow of villagers had not located them. Kais Tain was in danger, and those who walked were doomed.

“Have you seen anything of messengers?” Marak asked Andisak, and Andisak said he had.

“They went on down the line, but never came back,” Andisak said. “And the priests come and go, the Ila’s priests.”

The priests were never well loved in the west.

“We have one of the Ila’s books,” Andisak remarked at one point. “At your urging we took it. If you ask me, as the priests did, but I didn’t say, it’s damned dull. Court proceedings. Are they all like that?”

“To my knowledge, probably,” Marak said.

“I’m not sure I want to be written in the Ila’s book,” Andisak said. “What if I keep this book?”

“I’m sure it won’t be that much use. It’s what’s in it that matters; it’s all the books together. The Ila wants that.” So did Luz. So, very much, did Luz, who suffered through this dialogue and nagged him, saying his name over and over: Marak, Marak, until he grew distracted. East, east, east, Luz chided him, impatient of the delay.

Chapter Twenty

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Every child must be written down by the au’it and its shape accounted. When a child is born the priest must see it.

—The Book of the Ila’s Au’it

They talked at times, marak and the lord of kais Kurta. They rode at that easy pace the night long, into a sandy, murky dawn, and on into the day, letting the beshti rest from their long trek back in the line.

At dawn, when Lelie became fretful, Andisak found a woman to take Norit’s baby and tend it, and Marak let it go. He had not known how heavy that load had been, in all senses. He slept in the saddle after he had turned the hungry, fretting child over to a strange woman. He slept the sleep of the exhausted, and at the same time Antag and his brothers slept, trusting Andisak’s honor.

All that morning, at Marak’s intermittent waking, the wind blew and the sand still moved. They went over a desert continually being rewritten, discouraging the vermin, making the vermin’s constant hunt for leavings more difficult. The pickings were constantly richer toward the end of the caravan.