“I see people walking,” one of the others said, Kosul the potter, who sat nearby, and that, it struck him, was exactly what Norit had said. “They want us all.”

“The people there in the tower want us,” Norit said in this council of equals they had made in their tent. “I don’t know why.”

Heads generally nodded agreement.

And who had said there were people in the tower? But now they all believed it, and everyone agreed. Whether or not the soldiers could read, he had no idea. They had chosen the shade of the other tent, preferring the company of Maol and Tofi and the slaves, who detested them… most of all preferring Malin, who would not come near Hati, and there were only two tents in which to shelter.

Marak’s skin crawled. He wanted to rise up and deny all relationship with the rest of them.

And yet he increasingly formed a notion in his head not only of a threat sweeping down on them from every quarter of the earth, but of a refuge toward which they walked, one at the very heart of all the mystery they pursued, one they must reach soon, or die.

He shivered, and Norit caught the shiver, and so did Hati, then no few of the others.

All at once, for no reason whatsoever, he—all of them, perhaps—saw a hall of suns; and figures moving shadowlike among them. Structures traced fire across his vision.

He shouted. He clenched his hands and saw a door before him, and that door moved with no hand touching it, like the Ila’s doors, but what was behind that door he could not answer and did not want to know.

A man cried out near him, and fell down in a fit. “I see spirits!” he cried. “The god! The god! Ila save us and intercede! I see the god!”

Fever rushed over Marak’s skin, making his heart beat hard and his ears roar with sound.

Marak, a single voice said, wishing his attention, and he tried to give it, but the images came pouring through. From the other tent, at greater remove, there were shrieks and shouts.

Tower and cave and star, and each opened, and divulged a heart of structures and shapes and forms and light, all jumbled together. Walls were built of light and fire. Structures had tastes. Sounds had texture like rough sand.

He shouted. He leapt up and found something to lean on, the smooth strength of a tent pole, proving where he was. He rested his head against it, and stayed there long, long, not daring move until the visions stopped.

The fever had come back, as if he had taken a wound; and when his vision cleared he saw Norit had clenched her arms across her stomach and Hati had her hands braced before her mouth, gazing at nothing at all.