Hammerfall (21 page)

He walked outside, seeing the ground all likewise splotched and spattered, and the canvas the same. The beasts were all but laughable, having a coating of dried mud all over their backs, and the pale, spread canvas was a patchwork of red and rust like him and like Hati.

“Raindrops!” he exclaimed in astonishment. He laughed aloud, having expected blood and bruises, and finding them marked like fools. “Water drops. No wonder we were wet!”

“In the far north,” Hati said, “sweet water fell hard as stones, and became water again in the sun. So the grandfathers tell it.”

Norit had come out, and so now did Tofi and his men. Norit, too, was splotched with huge dollops of rust, and at some point tears had run down from her eyes, trails through the red smears. Now her eyes, red as fire, were fierce as Hati's.

“So it has rained on the Lakht,” Norit said in a low, hoarse voice, “and it will rain. The floodgates of the heavens will pour it out. A man can
die
of too much water.”

That was almost the last of his patience. Of all Luz's utterances, this one seemed sinister, intended to frighten them, he still had bruises on his skull, and for a moment he vowed he had made his last effort for Norit, as a vessel for Luz. But a second thought showed him Norit beneath the dirt and behind the burning eyes, and he said to himself that her skull likely had more bruises than his, and her head rang with worse than voices and a useful sense of where to go.

“Go sit and wait,” he said gently, to the wife from Tarsa, not to Luz. “Rest. Dust yourself off. We'll be moving on.”

The animals had to be brushed clean of grit so sand would not gall their hides under the packs. The mud had to be swept off the tent canvas, or it became a heavy weight of dirt for the beast that carried it. Before all was done they all had bleeding hands and sore arms, but they dug out the deep-irons, packed the tent, reorganized their baggage, and moved, over a rise and down across a landscape dotted with thousands of small pits.

This morning, however, they saw wild creatures, furtive shadows that dived beneath rocks at their passing: the water-fall had brought them to this plain. A handful of plants bloomed and withered with the day's heat, leaving a gold spatter of their life-bearing dust on the rocks. Water spilling on stones. Spheres falling into spheres. Gold dust scattering on the wind.

West by northwest. Hurry. Hurry. Hurry, Marak.

Marak tucked his foot up and rested his arms on his knee as he rode, rested his forehead so, trying not to think, to hear, wanting not to imagine what would be their fate if they had been on this plain when the stars fell.

Luz bore no grudge. And could he fault Norit, after all? Had harm come? It was only water. It was only pride. They had laughed, and the laughter, half-crazed and weak as it was, had healed them.

Had Luz, in driving Norit to the edge of collapse, managed their escape from the falling stars? Had she preserved their lives as mindfully as she preserved Norit from harm, and had she directed them around the region of worst damage? He wondered what had become of Pori, and the plain beyond.

A trail of fire went across the heavens. A star fell by daylight, smoking as it went. It went to the south: it was one whose direction was clear, and it fell beyond the hills, like a guide.

Two days later they rode again within view of the Qarain by sunrise, and the day after that found one of those caravan traces that led toward the holy city.

The au'it had learned to accommodate the beast's rocking gait and now used her journeys as well as her rests to record her observations.

And this, too, she wrote.

All the things they had seen and done the au'it had recorded. All these things she would present to the Ila, the unprecedented fall of rain and mud, the fall of stars alike.

And what would her book say?

That the stars fell? That their hope of safety lay in the tower, in the white tents?

The one even the Ila could surely see for herself, and of the other, Marak thought, they had no proof, even for themselves.

We have seen the stars fall in their thousands. The book contains no event like this.

—The Book of Oburan

THE RAGGED UPTHRUST
of the Qarain, that division from the Anlakht, was a wall on their right hand as they went. They were on the edge of desolation.

And by the next day they joined a recently used caravan trace and followed it in an abrupt turn toward the north, toward the Qarain.

Marak thought he had crossed this place before. He thought he recognized the vast, stone-littered pan and the rocks beside it.

Tofi recognized it, too. “Besh Karat,” he said excitedly, pointing a thin arm to the left of the trail, where a ridge of rounded rocks stood, looking like its name, a burdened, sulking beast. “We're at Besh Karat, at the bitter spring. And these last tracks are only a day ahead of us. Another caravan.”

A little after that Norit suddenly reined back her beast, which squalled a protest and fought the rein. “Stop,” she said. “Stop here.”

Marak shifted his foot back and took in the rein. Osan stopped, putting his ears up and laying them down. They were just passing among the rocks, an easy hiding place for vermin, and they were short of the bitter spring. It was not ordinarily a point to rest, and the beasts knew it, and complained.

“A little farther,” Marak said, which was only common sense. “Not in the rocks.”

“No. Here. Now.” Norit tried to get her reluctant beast to kneel: it would not, and came close to veering off the trail in besha obstinacy, but stopped as she began to dismount all the same.

“Damn,” Marak said, and slid down and went to rescue Norit. Tofi and Hati dismounted, and Hati assisted the au'it to dismount. They were at a stop. The freedmen got down.

“For what do we wait now?” he asked Norit, apprehensive and impatient both.

She answered him with one of those cold, clear stares that said Luz, more than Norit, was hearing him.

The vision of rocks and spheres followed, one crashing into the other, the sphere with fire at the point of damage, and a spreading ring of disturbance, like a stone cast into a fountain.

“Make the beasts sit down,” Norit said.

“Why?” he asked.

Norit said nothing. She only sat down, herself, her legs tucked up at a slant to avoid the heat of the sand.

Marak looked at Hati, both his temper and his dread reaching a near boil. They were so close to reaching Oburan: they were on the very trail to the holy city, and was there another calamity?

“Can she not
explain,
damn her?” he muttered under his breath, meaning Luz, and complaining to no one but the wind and the desert heat. “Do we need the tents? Is a star about to fall on top of us?” They were sitting next to Besh Karat, which indubitably housed vermin . . . he hoped they were small and timid vermin, nothing larger.

The vision came to him, the ring of fire, so vividly it blotted out the sun. He ground his hands against his eyes, fighting for a sight of Osan's rein as he tried to grasp it, and shook his head to clear it.

He settled Osan, and if Osan sat, Hati's beast and the au'it's settled, complaining. The pack beasts were always willing to settle, in hopes of shedding their packs for a rest, but here they were uneasy, and circled and made trouble, two of them wanting to stray off from their accustomed order. But they settled.

Tofi and the freedmen did not then unpack the baggage, and the beasts complained about that, squalling and rumbling in the heat.

So they sat, all of them, like fools, and waited for this danger, and they waited, and the unwilling beasts shifted their limbs under them and complained noisily, with no relief from the packs or the saddles in the sweltering heat. Tails whipped, beat the sand, thump.

Suddenly the beshti set to bawling again.

The earth shook itself like a beast twitching its skin, a hard shaking. Tofi's riding beast, which had started to rise in panic, plumped back down again, unhurt, but rolling its eyes and bellowing to the heavens.

Norit sat with her hands in her lap, combing out a tassel on her headcloth.

The tremor passed. Tofi swore and hid his face in his hand, looked up again as if to be sure it was over.

Norit showed no inclination to move.

“Shall we go?” he asked Norit.

“Not yet,” Norit said. She stared into nothing, the tassel forgotten.

The sphere fell against the greater sphere. The ring of disturbance went out. Marak saw it. He knew Hati did. Hati's hands were clenched on her quirt until the knuckles stood white.

The au'it, having endured one shaking, grimly gripped her book and her ink-cake, and wrote, braced for more disturbance.

Time passed.

“Shall we pitch the tents?” Tofi asked at last. The sun was high. It seemed now that they would not go beyond this place before noon.

“No,” Norit said shortly, in a tone not inviting question. “Stay still.”

Marak shrugged and found occupation sharpening his boot-knife, as Hati and two of the helpers had tucked up and attempted to sleep.

Norit combed out the one tassel and three or four others.

Then a haze in the west caught Marak's eye, a fuzzy seam on the far horizon that grew wider and wider and wider every instant.

“Hati,” he said as it grew. And to all of them,
“Storm.”

Damn Luz, there was no time to pitch the tent. The storm came like sand flowing downhill: it went from that seam to a band across the horizon to a towering wall faster than he had ever seen a storm move, less like a wind than a landslide. In hardly longer than a panicked mind could think about it, that wall filled the sky, and rushed over them with a stench of earth and heat like nothing Marak had ever smelled.

The beasts did not attempt to rise: with successive shoves of their knees and hind feet, they shifted about to present their backsides to that oncoming wind, burdens and all.

Sand began to blast over them, stinging exposed skin.

“Get together!” Tofi shouted, flinging his arms about Marak and Hati. The au'it folded her book and put away her writing kit. Norit moved closer to them, the au'it joined them; and Tofi's two men, and they all pressed themselves against the sun-heated earth, together, making a single lump, robes tucked up for shelter.

The moving sand deafened them and dimmed the light. Marak protected his eyes with the headcloth and tried to see through that veil, and found only greater dark and lesser. It grew hard to breathe through the folds of cloth. The smell was that of a sandstorm, and of hot sand and of deep sand and of burning.

There was no substance left in the air; they struggled for the least whisper of breath, losing strength, until at last the air came, tasting like the wind off a forge.

Lying together, faces buried in each other's robes, they gasped and breathed such as they could, fighting for the dusty air they drew, and dared not move, while the wind roared over them, and kept on, and kept on.

But air there began to be, if only a trickle through cloth; and the sand that blasted over them began to settle long enough to become a weight in the folds of their robes. It found ways in among them, in the crooks of arms and legs, building supports under them, finding crevices to fill, threatening to bury them alive.

Breathing was the greatest concern. They fought to stay behind the wall of sand that built against them and atop what built under them. It seemed forever before the gust front passed and they could stir out of their sand-choked huddle, still wind-battered and blinded by the blowing sand, but able to stand.

The beasts had suffered. One was down under his pack, alive, but unable to free himself until they removed the baggage that trapped him at disadvantage, and by then he had been lying so long he was paralyzed. They had to rock and pull and haul him to rights and up to his feet. Three had painful windburns on their rumps, where the hide was blasted bare and red, and the canvas that wrapped the packs, part of the tents, was worn through several layers on one edge.

They were all alive, that was the miraculous thing. They were alive, though the sky was still a sandy murk, and the air still stank like hot iron.

“If we pitch a tent,” Tofi said, muffled in his veils against sand and dust, “it will not stand with this constant shaking. Best we do as we have done, build a wall of the baggage and stretch our canvas from it. I've never seen a storm come on like that.”

“Will there be another?” Marak asked Norit, hard-edged. Norit said nothing. “What should we do? Luz? What comes next?”

The vision of the spreading rings repeated itself in his mind, over and over and over, making no sense.

Came another shock, a great one, a long one, and the one beast that had gotten up staggered and bellowed its distress.

“Norit!” Hati shouted.

“Camp here,” Norit said.

Pressed to invention, they and the slaves unburdened all the beasts and contrived to stretch canvas from a stack of baggage to a few anchoring stakes, lashed down so it would shed sand that accumulated from hour to hour.

That gave them a measure of comfort. They slept, but slept by turns to go out and keep the two entries clear. The sand-fall, no longer blasting, but a general murk in the air, went on and on into true dusk, then a night so deep and so cold they huddled together, men and women, freemen and freedmen together.

When morning came creeping through the murk, there was no talk of moving on. Those habituated to the desert were used to waiting out storms, and were schooled to patience even this near a goal. So they waited, deciding finally that the ground had stopped shaking enough to try the pegs. They pitched their tent for comfort, and salved the animals' seeping windburns, which were crusted over with sand.

At that, they and the beasts alike had proper shelter, and they rested wrapped in double robes against a cold unlike any they had ever felt.

“I've never seen the like,” Hati swore, shivering. “In the deepest desert I've never seen such a storm.”

“Tomorrow the sand-fall will be less,” Norit said.

There was no question in Marak's mind that Norit knew exactly what would happen. Norit crept close to him and then Luz shoved away. Alone, Norit bowed her head and wiped her eyes in silent tears. There was no solution he could give. He offered his hand, and she jerked away. It tore his heart to watch her.

Hati shook her head as if she could read his thoughts, and rubbed his shoulders, making him realize his muscles were set like stone. She had clever fingers and knew where to press. He stretched out finally and slept, and for a few hours the dreams left him in peace.

On the next day the storm abated somewhat; but the taste in the air was that of sulfur. The wind stank, and it burned the eyes. They ate beneath the canvas, and carefully shielded their food from the foul stuff that blew in from the sky, under a yellow murk in which the noon sun was a spot in the haze.

“The grass and the grain will wither,” Norit said. “All the west is ruins. But that's not the worst.”

Kais Tain was in the west. All his father's household was in the west. Marak wanted to strike her senseless. He had done all he had done, he had survived all he had survived, and Norit told them calmly that nothing lived in the west.

Marak,
the voices said in the midst of it all, clamoring for his action.
Marak.

Norit said, aloud, “We should go now.”

“When did she become god?” Tofi cried. Their voices had become raw and unpleasant from the dust, and Tofi's voice broke on the shout.

“Obey her,” Marak said wearily. “Where else will you go?”

“To hell,” Tofi said bleakly. “We're all going to hell.”

But Tofi roused up the freedmen, who moved about loading their baggage and getting the beasts up.

As they were packing up, a small thing that lived in buried rocks came out and hissed and dived back again. One of the men threw a rock at the burrow in the Besh Karat.

“It will die on its own,” Norit said.

The bitter spring was covered by deep sand. It would not flow again until the vermin dug it up. The beshti themselves, water-short, still showed no disposition to seek it out.

What Norit prophesied haunted Marak as they rode away from that place.

Should even the ill-tempered creature in its house of stone perish? Should winds like that cover the wells? From that small comprehension he truly began to grasp the height and depth of the devastation, east to west, from the highest to the lowest.

He wished he had stayed at the white tents. He wished he had told Hati to stay. He wished he had never undertaken this fool's errand with Norit. There was no way out of this. There
was
no safety. He was a fool, and he had led them all to their destruction.

But he had lived before by imposing strict conditions on his death.

He would not die and leave Hati and Norit alone to face what came. That was his underlying resolve. He would not die without speaking to the Ila and relaying what she had asked to hear. That was his mission; and it was not that far. They would at least attempt the return, whatever the Ila did, and if, in the Ila's wrath, he could not,
they
would go back to the tower. He would put the fear in Tofi and have him promise that.

Both these things he promised himself, while he roused Osan to his feet and turned Osan's head toward the holy city.

Marak, Marak, Marak,
the voices said to him. By noon, they passed bones that jutted up from the sand, a besha's carcass already stripped by vermin. They came to others, four and five, and the bones of two men on the other side of the caravan track, but those bones were gnawed for the marrow and scattered, dug up by some creature after the sand had covered them. A scrap of canvas lay against a distant rock, looking as the wind had carried it and bunched it around the base of the boulder. It might have sheltered a man, but if it did, that man was dead by now, beyond their help. And the visions were now of fire, fire flowing like water from a broken spigot, fire coursing through land and eroding it.