Every good beast and every grass that produces grain and every tree that produces fruit is the gift of the Ila. The grasses and the trees she gave to the villages and told them to build gardens, instructing them to make covered conduits and to make basins of fired brick.

—The Book of Pori

Marak mended, in pain and fever. patya stayed close by him while the storm wind blew and racketed about the canvas. Tofi came and laid a hand on his and reported to him in meticulous, quiet detail on the state of the camp and the Ila’s temper.

The au’it sat nearby and wrote all these things.

Memnanan, too, came and stood over him, asking in the Ila’s name how he was. Marak heard. He could not see Hati’s answer to the captain, but he could hear it, and imagined Hati’s shrug, which was Hati’s characteristic answer to mysteries.

“Healing,” she said to Memnanan, and through him, to the Ila.

That visit meant the storm was not bad enough to prevent Memnanan reaching them from the Ila’s tent. That meant they remained in camp and he knew they had to move: something was coming. East, east, east, the pitch came to him now, urgent and frequent. His inability to move was the decreed torment for his sin of desertion.

Priests came and looked at him. That, he could not account for, and thought he might have dreamed the visit in his fever. He saw three of them in their white robes sitting on a mat and contemplating his condition. He grew increasingly perturbed about the situation, and still could not wake far enough to tell them to go to hell.

He fretted and he sweated, and eventually Memnanan and the priests left him to Hati’s care, saying that it was clear there was something remarkable about his healing, and about the child.

The au’it wrote. Norit remained as she was. In the distance he heard Lelie crying, and crying.

“Someone,” he tried to say, “someone take the baby.”

“Norit! See to that child!” Hati said sharply, but Norit sat still, lost in her visions. Hati herself got up and fetched Lelie and put the wounded child into Norit’s grasp. “Take care of her!” Hati said.

Norit never waked from her visions, but held Lelie against her, her hands absently doing things a mother might do. Her eyes were still set on the distance, full of fire and fear, experiencing that place and time Norit saw more clearly than she saw the sights around her.

“We have to move,” Norit said, and said it more than once. He willed her to say so, when he could not. “Hati, we have to move.”

“I know we have to move,” Hati said. “Everyone knows we have to move. We can’t see our own feet out there in the dark. We’ll move when there’s light.”