Looking back, he saw Norit had gained the saddle again, in the weary, moving throng. There was no eagerness in the crowd around them. A kind of glazed desperation had replaced fervor and mirth and anger and all the rest of motives that kept men moving toward the unknown, away from calamity.

“Let me take the baby,” Patya said, riding close to him. “I’ll hold her.”

Marak passed her over, glad to surrender the responsibility. “Norit can carry her on the descent,” he said, and added, because with his own experience, he pitied Norit: “Her mother doesn’t know. She’s gone where she goes.”

“Will she come back to be—?” Patya asked, and to her mad brother, tried to find words.

“Sane again? Will she be sane? I hope so.” But he saw no sign of it, not now, not for time to come. “If she doesn’t, we’ll take care of her, Hati and I. And you.” He saw how Patya took to the waif. “We’ll take care of you, too. We’re family.”

He had to promise that to Patya. But he foreknew her relation to him might soon become a hazard to Patya’s well-being, to her very life. He suspected their au’it had been making an extensive, perhaps not favorable, report, that her whole account had gone to the Ila now, and he had to know, before he set out on this risky descent, before people began coming to the Ila, mad for water and in terror of the star-fall, what the Ila meant to do about that report.

He rode beside Hati, not reporting to Memnanan, or to the Ila.

He waited for the Ila, riding within sight of him, to send for him.

He waited for Memnanan to ask him what he had seen out there, or why they had ridden back in disarray. Even if Memnanan had gotten a full report from Aigyan of what Hati had told him—it was good sense to ask the firsthand witness, at least, what he had seen, and why he had changed his mind about Pori.

No query came from either. The au’it—an au’it—rode near them, rode veiled, as she often had, appearing out of the dust.

Why she had left them remained a mystery, one with, he was sure, the Ila at the heart of it, and Memnanan’s ignoring him as the wrapping on the affair.

“The Ila asked you no questions?” he asked Hati.

“Not a one. I only talked to Aigyan.”

“Don’t look back,” he said in a low voice. “The au’it’s back there. Did you see the au’it immediately when you got back?”

“No.” Hati sounded startled. “I don’t think she went with us. Or did we lose her?”

“One is with us now,” he said. “Something’s happened. I don’t know what, I don’t know why, but something’s happened.”