They wrapped her in her aifad, using it like a rope, and carried her back despite her screaming and struggling. Her braids dragged the ground and whipped in her fury. Bare legs flailed the air. They almost dropped her. She had more courage than most, this wife from Tarsa, and surprising determination.

{East, the demons said again. East, east, east.}

But a man sitting might resist the world tilting as it did. He had learned that.

“Lelie!” the wife cried. It was a woman’s name. It might be sister or daughter or mother. He had no idea.

They wrapped the wife in more substantial cords, tied her against one of the two strong tent poles that upheld Marak’s tent, and left her babbling and shrieking, “Lelie, Lelie.”

In the guards’ disinterest, in her own helplessness, the wife’s struggles grew weaker, but the shouting went on intermittently, until her voice cracked and went hoarse. Her fight lasted until her struggling dwindled to mere twitches against the cords, and her face ran with wasteful tears.

A potter from the lowlands claimed he saw angels on the cliff, claimed it quite calmly, though there was no cliff in sight.

The lad from Tijanan, at the edge of the shade, rocked obsessively for an hour and banged his head bloody against the stony sand.

Toward afternoon the caravan master and his men doled out cold rations; the wife from Tarsa and the boy were both too distraught to eat, but the caravan master beat them with his quirt and the boy ate. The wife they forced to drink, holding her nose until she swallowed, and after a while, the caravanners holding her arms, she swallowed water on her own. It was a sort of kindness. They might have left her to walk thirsty, knowing they would still deliver her to the city by next afternoon, but the sickness came rapidly on the ones who would not drink. Their bodies poured out less and less water, and they died, cheating the Ila of whatever she wished. So the guards assured that they would have no fault in the matter.

Marak made no such rebellion against his fate. He took a little water in his mouth, broke the caked provision with two free hands, and ate, slowly, observing the guards’ diminishing battles with the wife, wondering would she yet die before they reached Oberan, and be free.

The mad had proliferated in the west, in the hills, for thirty years, and now rumor said the Ila had had a dream of them, and wished to purify the land once for all of their affliction.