Light sheeted above them, went on across the face of the world, throwing distant mountains into relief, showing them the whole world in a lightning stroke, leaving him nothing but the will to get the ones with him to shelter, where Lelie was—center of the world, that place, that refuge, that safety where Hati would go, and Norit. He saw tents around him, sitting beshti, exhausted, lifting their heads toward the strange dawn.

Marak tucked low, ready for quake or wind or whatever might come, rode and rode past tents and men straggling back to their own families, their own tribes, running now, desperately.

This light instead of fading only increased, and as he rode to the last tents, as he slid down to stand on the earth and looked up next to his own beshti, he saw a murky fire above the cliffs in the west, a fire shedding that unnatural glow in the sky above their heads.

He saw Norit and Hati arrive, and seized their reins, and helped them down. Tofi and Patya followed.

“The sea boils up!” Norit cried, her face turned up to that red-glowing sky. “A pillar of cloud goes up and burns with light, up and up and up, and the bitter water and heavens are overturned.” She lifted up arms bare against that red, western dawn, and for a moment she seemed caught in that vision, spread against the sky, dyed in light.

Marak seized her, pulled her toward the tent.

The earth suddenly shook as if the world had broken. Beshti went down, some sitting down, one, Norit’s, thrown down off its feet. Marak lost his footing, and protected Norit with his elbows. The tent and shelter was just next to them, while the shaking continued, and continued, and continued.

Then stopped. The whole world, lit red, caught its breath. The air was still. Marak moved, got a knee under him, got the other to bear and got up. Their tent was still standing. The au’it stood at the doorway, red-robed, expressionless recorder of all she saw.

Hati and Patya and Tofi tried to help him up, and he got up, hauled Norit to the doorway, used her body to brush the storm flap out of his path. Hati was at his back, all of them were there, and they tried to help him in the blind dark inside. It was all he could do, to carry Norit. His strength was flowing out of him fast; and when he reached what he thought was their place, their mats, he fell, trying to kneel, and bruised his knees in doing it.

He let Norit down from hands numb with swelling.

“Lelie,” Norit said. “Lelie, Lelie, Lelie!”