Marak, the voices said, always there in these hours, along with the urgency to move, move, move, go east, and he would, he had to, but ultimately he had no power to save the weak, the feckless, the ignorant. He tried to call what he felt in his soul responsibility; but it was beyond any sense of responsibility: it was simply doing what he could do, as long as he could do it, like a man walking on his last strength.

They settled. Norit, meanwhile, rocked, rocked, singing, quietly, mad as they came. Her head dropped several times, and a final time, and she slept, Lelie sprawled in her lap. There was nothing he could do for them, either. Hati slept, and he knew it was his own duty to rest and to become sane again, but Marak, Marak, Marak was all through his brain, and it would not let him go. Thoughts raced and circled through his head, what to do, whether he could find the exact spot where they had descended off the Lakht the last time.

Most of all—the chance that storm might come while they were exposed to that edge, that the earth might shake while they were on that climb—all these things.

And the sand-fall below the cliffs—he had forgotten that. Sand came off the Lakht, wind-carried. They could get down and find that their tame slope, their trail, was under a wind-borne waterfall of sand, the trail changing under them and a weight of sand simply crushing them down—but if they were too far away from the cliffs, the sand-charged wind would kill them. He struggled to imagine what the balance was, how close they dared be, whether the fiercest wind that ever blew might simply carry all the sand-fall up into the storm. Might it be the best gamble to pitch tents closer to the cliffs and risk being buried?

What was right? What could Luz know about conditions no one had ever seen?

“Marak,” Hati said, and sat up and tugged at him, wanting him to lie down and be reasonable. He would not. Could not rest. Not with that realization. They had to do more than just reach the bottom. They had to get a camp pitched that would save their lives.

And he had to guess right.

She leaned against him, and put her arm about him, her head against his shoulder. “Luz is noisy today. She should shut up.”

“It’s coming,” he said. “It’s coming for sure. Luz wants us to move now. She’s never walked this desert. She doesn’t know what she’s asking of us. But we don’t know what we’re facing.”

“She should shut up,” Hati said, laying her head against his heart. “She should let us alone. We’re doing all we possibly can.”