The taint is in your blood, his father had shouted at her when he knew the truth, but he had not struck her. If he had done that, Marak would have struck him down. But his father then looked at him and asked that damning question: “When did it come on you?”

“I don’t remember,” he had had to confess to Tain, to that strong, scarred face. “From very young.”

His father had turned his face away and said not a thing more. So the madness reached back and back to stain all they had ever done together. All the trust they had for each other was a lie. That was the last time they had looked at one another eye to eye.

The sun reached the zenith. The caravan spread its canvas for shelter from the light, the mirage of the city having faded, and the wife of Tarsa, still talking to herself, subsided sobbing into rest.

The others huddled together and averted their eyes from the sun outside their patch of shade, and the boy rocked and talked to himself. The red-bearded man, a middle-aged tanner with the skin on his shoulders peeling yet again from the sun, sat on the heated sand and rocked and prayed to gods the faithful well knew would not heed the mad.

Marak did none of these things. He only sat and stared at the horizon, beneath that shade of an open-sided tent, as sure as his guards and the caravan master that tomorrow, perhaps tomorrow evening, they would reach the end of their journey.

None of the other madmen had ever made the trek across the Lakht. None of the other raving prisoners had ridden to war against the Ila’s long-lasting power, and helped the fiercest of the abjori rain fire on those towers.

None of the others had risen so high on a lie. None of the others had been the heir of Kais Tain, or the hope of Tain’s long-surviving ambition.

In those days his dreams were secret, mostly at night. A young fighter bent on following his father’s path could keep that secret even if he bit his lip bloody, even if the voices distracted him at his father’s table or blinded him while he was riding breakneck down a dune face.

But their war had failed before their love did.

Three years had passed since the retreat from the holy city. And in this last year the secrets had multiplied into visions and visions gained voices. Visions that came like threads and sticks of fire wove themselves tighter and tighter until the sights they conjured unpredictably replaced the sight of his eyes.