He knew better. As he had known the storm’s limit, he knew the limit of this, and so Hati argued his point, and so many of the mad joined him, all grumbling: no one wanted the delay. The visions came and went; but east, east, east! the madness shrieked, and there was anger, and there were sulking faces. Tofi flung wide his arms and shouted at them all, “All right, all right, we will not use the deep irons, at least, and may the god have mercy on our lives!”

They pitched the two tents, which billowed and bucked as if they had a life of their own, in the lee of a low ridge, which they had somewhat between them and the wind. The animals settled peacefully to their noontime meal, and the lot of them, mad and sane, had dried fruit and a little grain-cake.

Marak, the voices said. Every noontime they spoke. They spoke to Maol, Tofi’s woman, who stood in the dusty noon sun, battered and shaken by the wind. She had forgotten Tofi, forgotten who she was. Norit watched her, singing to herself, her fingers measuring all along the hem of her robe, as if this were somehow important.

Every man, every woman, seemed numb. There was no strength, no time amid the visions: passion ebbed and evaporated with every trace of moisture shed into the wind.

Norit sang of water, of a stream and a lost love, and her voice, childlike at times, haunted the wind. The woman, Maol, swayed, as if dancing to that music.

Marak!

He looked up, his heart beating hard. All at once he wished more than life to rise up and walk toward that summons.

Instead he doggedly lowered his chin into the muffling, protective aifad and fingered the stitching on his boot, losing himself in the patterns. Hati, likewise veiled, was against his side. Norit was with him, sitting, swaying. The au’it slept nearby, the Ila’s eyes and ears, in company with madmen who thought of nothing more than losing themselves in the desert and becoming food for the hunters.

Marak!

Now he rose to his feet without even thinking. So had Hati, and Norit, and all the mad. Only Tofi slept, only the slaves, and the au’it.

Marak’s heart sped. No, he said to himself. No! But the voices said yes.

Hati began to walk. He reached out to stop her, and shook at her, and seized Norit by the arm as Norit began to walk past him. The dust had begun to rise. It obscured all the horizon.

And in the blowing dust, a ghost, a spirit, a mirage without the sun, a figure stood.

It seemed to be a man in thick gauzy robes, in the colors of the sand.

No tribesman. The vision of the tower rose up, built itself in Marak’s eyes where the man stood.

And vanished.