But when on the tenth day the trail went down beside a great wide shelf of layered rock, all broken and rubbled, and when they began generally, if scarcely perceptibly, to descend, then Hati said they were surely nearing an end; then Marak recognized in the high rocks and the presence of the bitter spring higher up the source of water that might sustain a village, and he was encouraged. By all visible evidence, Tofi was not wrong in his estimations.

By the third day Tofi was certain enough that, after they had ridden all morning, and as an uncommonly hot sun beat down like a hammer, he gave no order to pitch the tents.

The caravan track, already broad, joined with two others and made a wide, wind-scoured depression as high as the beasts’ shoulders.

Now their course veered a little south, following that line. All of them, all the mad, grew anxious, just by that veering off their eastward course, knowing better, as they did.

East, their voices said.

And the voices clamored at Marak, too: Haste, haste, haste. Move on. Don’t stop.

Patience, Marak told his demons. Be patient. The dead are no use to anyone. Rest and water. Rest and water. We can’t be cheated of that.

East, they argued. Marak, Marak, Marak. Move on. There is no time.

The collective roads made a centuries-used trail down beside another ragged shelf of crumbling rock.

And from that trail they rode along a rocky ridge, and they began to descend again.

They came between two tall rocks and saw below them a broad double circle of dune-choked buildings and bright awnings, and a black netting that stretched over a garden the equal in size of the village itself.

“Pori,” Tofi said, as if he himself had doubted. A smile spread over his face and cracked the dust, and it spread to other faces. “Pori,” they said. “Pori!”

It was the end or the beginning of the Lakht, however one came to it, and for a Lakht village it was rich in water, if not in trade of caravans seeking water and rest. The caravans that came were out of the south: Marak remotely knew of it as a navigation point, one of several in the Lakht; and knew that the few caravans out of the remote south lowlands used this place, climbing the Lakht toward Oburan, and bending then toward Keish-an-Dei. There the tribes of the Lakht declared twice-annual peace, and met to trade and marry and plan their mischief on their brothers of the western Lakht, Hati’s tribe among them.

But the tribes of the eastern Lakht were fallible allies, so Tain had learned, and Marak remembered. We cannot come this year: the wells have failed. We cannot meet you; the westerners have offended us. We cannot send reinforcements: our priest is uneasy.