It was not the star-fall, he decided: it was his own head, feeling as if it expanded, and with it all the sky expanded and then contracted.

He might have fainted. But in what seemed only a moment he heard Hati giving orders, and Memnanan and Tofi shouting, a comfortable and ordinary sound. The camp was moving. At any moment he had to get up and ride.

Then someone else overshadowed him and picked up the poles of the litter.

This was a priest, a presence which he found almost as strange as tribesmen coming and going. He could not see who had the poles at his head, but he thought it likely another priest.

It was the Ila who ordered all priests, and if there were priests doing useful work, that was probably not a bad thing.

But why priests?

They brought Lelie, too, and laid her on him. She was a heavy weight, and it hurt, but she was not overall a burden. Lelie was fast asleep and he could see the wound in her leg, too, ugly and swollen… but healing, as he healed.

He was bemused by that fact. They had bled into one another. Maker fought maker. Or Norit’s were in the child, potent from conception. Could the makers pass like that… through a mother’s blood, if not through a father?

Marak, Marak! East, east, east! The world swung, and his head did, and he fell flat. He saw the rock hit the sphere, again and again and again. He heard the rhythmic sound of water, and saw a shore where endless water washed against the sand.

It might be the bitter sea. Stars fell into that sea and extinguished themselves. Plumes of water and smoke went up and joined the clouds. The sun went down in sullen red, and more stars fell.

He remembered where they had to be. They had to reach Pori. He tried to tell Hati so, to be sure he remembered the truth, and had not come adrift in visions. There was water at Pori, water necessary to all these people, whose ranks marched on and on, stretching across a star-battered plain, whose dead lay in rows beside their road.

The priests changed off with other priests from time to time. He waked at such moments, and blinked at the priests, and wondered at the vision. Intermittently, too, the caravan suffered from the wind, which gusted, and blew red ropes of sand across his vision. The priests staggered, and sometimes jolted the litter. Lelie waked at one such jolt, frightened by the wind, hungry and out of sorts.

“Hush,” he said to her tear-stained face, and she knew his voice, and broke into a loud wail, in pain and crying for her mother. But Luz had her mother, and he could bring her to Norit, but he could not get Norit back… he failed in that, continually, and tried to comfort her.