There was still loud complaint from the beasts, from the village edge to the caravan track outside, and onto the flat that stretched before them. But, Marak! the voices said, over and over and over, and the fire was in the rest of them. Water and fresh fruit and willing flesh had no power like what seethed in the mad now. It had overpowered the soldiers. Now it overpowered even Malin, who might have wanted to stay in Pori. She wept. She ran off among the buildings. And she crept back again, and sought her riding beast, catching its rein. But she had no one to help her mount. She tried to make it kneel, and it only circled and bawled.

“Damn you!” she shouted. It made some of the villagers laugh, but none of the mad was amused.

“Do we want her?” Hati asked, in the haze of images and the din of voices.

Malin had gotten two village men to lift her up, and suffered indignities of their hands on the way. But she landed astride, her clothes utterly in disarray, and took the rein in both hands, and kicked the recalcitrant beast as fiercely as she could. It threw back its head and complained, but she had the rein in her hands, and turned him, to the howling mirth of the villagers.

“Let us go,” Marak said to Tofi, who was already out of countenance with the sudden departure, and with Malin, and the missing soldiers.

“This isn’t wise,” Tofi said. “This isn’t a race, omi.”

Marak was sure it was not. But it satisfied the voices. And not even Malin could slither out of their grip.

Chapter Nine

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The stars in heaven are numbered and the Ila knows the names of them.

—The Book of Oburan

They found their missing pair staggering along toward noon, glassy-eyed and confused, on a steep shale. Alive. That was the wonder.

“Where are you going, fools?” Marak asked.

“To the tower,” Foragi said, and the other, Kassan:

“The cave.”

“Give them water,” Marak said. “They seem alive enough to save.”

“Things are growing in our eyes,” the one cried, and it was all too true: Marak knew; all the mad knew: there were times that the lines of fire seemed to proliferate, to demand attention, to build and build and build.

They had brought beasts saddled for their fellow fools, but it was too steep to mount, and they were big men, too heavy to lift up at the disadvantage of the slope. The ex-soldiers had to walk down.

“These men we can do without,” Tofi said in a low voice as they rode. “The woman we can do without, most of all. They’re the troublemakers. There always are, in a caravan, and these are ours.”

“There always are,” Marak agreed. “Without their bad example, someone else would have to be the fool. Would they not?”