His hands gripping the rope were beyond pain: cord met raw flesh, and he would not let go, would not give up their tent to the wind. They were the outermost of the crescent of tents: they were the ones exposed to the greatest force of that wind coming off the cliffs, with no shelter at all but the tents behind them, and if their position was wrong, they were dead, but the sand was going past them…was going over their heads, in a wind greater than any wind that had ever blown.

A second object hit the back tent wall, something huge that flapped about and rumbled over the top of them with indistinct sound: it might have been a tent blown loose, its people dead in an instant in this wind, its goods carried away on the storm front. The seams of the tent strained, and sand rubbing against the canvas was a force that could wear away the threads, secure an opening, and if there began to be an opening, the wind could tear it wide.

Marak held on. He had for days denied the voices, and now, like a penitent thief, he hoped for some answer from Luz: in extremity and fear for all their lives he begged for a voice, contritely, obediently, ready to surrender to his voices if only they would tell him what to do.

He held, and the wind that came now was not the slight coolth and strange smell of deep sands overturned. This wind stank with a stench that raised the fine hairs on his nape, an indescribable mix of scents, things that never have been carried into the light, the depth of the destruction of Pori, and Oburan, and the overthrow of the bitter water itself. It smelled like a forge confounded with a graveyard, it smelled of the wind off the high mountains and the rotting bottom of a garden. It was all these things, and the wind grew louder, and louder, and louder and his ears more and more congested, until he thought his head must burst in the next instant.

Then, like an immense weight on their shoulders, the storm began to let them go, and passed them with a roar so deep the ground seemed again to thump in its going.

Someone wept. Lelie set up a wail drowned by the wind.

Then a woman’s voice came clear in a sharp, gasping cry for help, and he began to realize that it was Memnanan’s wife.

“It’s now!” the lady cried, breathless, terrified, and then Marak understood the commotion and dismay. Her baby was on its way, in the dark, in the storm, in the noise that drowned everything but the loudest shouts.