In the great distance and through the blowing dust a slope-walled spire rose up ahead of them, rising out of the flat desert as the land rose. It was an anomalous thing, and yet familiar, so very familiar it sent chills down Marak’s spine.

Hati touched his arm, for a moment stopped still, and half whispered, “The spire.”

“The tower,” Norit said.

Closer, the voices whispered. Closer, Marak Trin Tain.

“Come,” Ian said again.

They struggled to keep Ian’s pace, and it was hard to ignore the clamor of voices, now, urging Faster, faster, faster.

Hard, but possible. They were not fools, and he was not a slave to his madness. Marak deliberately slowed his pace, walking at a rate he thought Norit and the au’it could sustain. Hati slowed. So they all fell behind. Ian looked back, displeased, but none of them walked faster, so Ian fell to their pace.

Slower still, as the tower grew clearer out of the air, and clearer. They came close enough to see the stony ground around about it, a strange depression atop a hill of cindery rocks, with bits of glass catching the light.

Marak paused for rest, to Ian’s great annoyance, as the sun was setting, as those bits of glass were catching the red light.

It was a tower as great as any in the holy city, and not a structure of air and fire. Its sand-colored walls, casting back the sunset glow in the west, might be stone, but if so, there was no joint of masonry.

“It has no windows,” Norit said, “nor doors.”

And what use was it in itself, Marak asked himself, and why had it haunted the mad, and what did it mean to any of them? As a dream it had seemed to mean things on its own, a high place, a landmark to guide the mad.

If it was a real place it had to have uses, and occupants, and a reason for being there.

For that reason, too, he sat down where he stood, and Hati and Norit and the au’it settled by him.

“It’s not that far,” Ian said, standing as if ready to walk again.

“Why should we trust you?” Marak said. “Why should we go any farther? We’ve seen what it is.”

“Have you?” Ian asked. “You haven’t seen everything. And you know nothing. Get up.”

Up, up, up, the voices echoed in Marak’s head. He saw the cave of suns, and now Norit’s figures moving within that cave. Norit and Hati each had his hands, and Norit’s was cold. Hati’s sweated; and the au’it wrote, hunched over to protect her book from the wind.