Part 14 (1/2)

-The Book of Oburan Fever burned in marak's skin,ran in veins of fire through his body. His bones ached. Strange smells a.s.saulted his nostrils. The place reeked like the lye pits, or a tanner's vat at noonday.

He lay in a bed of sorts, unable to move his arms. ”Hati,” he said, and then, scrupulously, dutifully, to be fair: ”Norit?”

He had no sense of living presence near him. He wondered where they were.

He wondered wherehe was.

Very faintly and remote from his immediate concern, too, he thought of the au'it, and the rest of the madmen the Ila had sent with him, at his word.

He thought of Tofi, who had lost everything on this journey. Of Malin and Ka.s.san and Foragi, the fools who had walked into the desert.

A man in sand-colored robes had lured him from the safety of a camp where he at least had allies. He had been a fool to leave, and a greater fool to walk into the tower. He had thought so much of following the vision at the last he had forgotten good sense.

Mad, Tain had said.Not my son. Not my blood. Living in my house, taking my food .

When he failed Tain's expectations Tain had had no love for him. But when he exceeded them he had Tain's bitter jealousy. The army had cheered for him, and Tain had sulked in his tent, full of resentment.

Was there nowhere any right course?

He saw his sister sitting in the dust, his mother falling behind, left sonless.

He saw the faces of his father's men, all staring, all grim and betraying nothing while Tain accused him.

Not my son .

After an interval he heard footsteps moving around him. He smelled strange, pungent things. The roaring in his ears built and built to a sickening headache.

Perhaps he was dying. The possibility failed to alarm him. There was no particular pain, except the headache, and he had had no few of those in his life.

But if he was dying, it was without answers, andthat was not fair.

If he was dying, he had led Hati and Norit here, and they needed him awake, not lying here half-witted.

Their absence was a grievance and a worry, and when he thought of them, that worry increased and the headache became less.

”Hati,” he said aloud, and tried to move.

Voices spoke to him, or around him. He felt small, vexing pains. He grew ill with the smells, and he grew angrier and angrier at his helplessness. If he fought, he could open his eyes. If he fought, he could think. If he fought, he could remember why he was here and where Hati had gone.

The voices went away. There was utter quiet for a time. It was hard to maintain the struggle. It slipped away from him, just slipped away.

And with no sense of connection to that dark place, he simply waked up, in a brown, smooth-walled room.

He lay under a light cover, on a bed that stank of lye or some such thing, under a glowing sun that lit the whole room, and he had not a st.i.tch on.

He sat up, on cloth fine and smooth as any he had ever felt, and as clean to look at, though it stank. He was clean, he was shaven, his hair was washed and reeked of alcohol and lye. The sunburn on his hands and the new blisters on his feet had diminished to a little peeling skin, and that told him, given the way he healed, that it had been more than a few hours he had lain here, and that the dark dream might be no dream at all.

He swung his legs off the bed.

Sand-colored clothing lay on a s.h.i.+ning metal chair at the foot of the bed. It made him remember Ian and the guidance that had brought him here.

”Ian!” he shouted out, d.a.m.ning him for his betrayal. ”Ian!”

He expected no response. He doubted Ian would want to be near him at the moment.

But if the clothes were here, they were surely for him, who had none, and they were cleaner than the rest, smelling at least of nothing worse than herbs.

He put on the breeches and s.h.i.+rt and belt, sat down to put on the boots... in every particular like the boots he had come in, but new, as if they had been re-created down to the last st.i.tch.

He hesitated at the gauzy robe, robes indicating tribe and tribe indicating allegiance; but he was not accustomed to go about in half undress, either; and when he picked it up, he saw how a shoulder st.i.tch of strong twill bound the layers into a garment that could be shrugged on with its folds in place.

The aifad, too, was doubled gauze. He had no doubt how to put it up and wrap it if he chose. Clever, he thought, more than clever. He let the aifad lie on his shoulders, seeing no need of its protection in this sterile place.

Fine cloth, strange smells, burning lights... it was not sun that shone through the ceiling. It had several sources behind the translucent panels. This windowless smooth box of a room was beyond doubt a part of the cave of suns, within the tower. He was not far from where he had fallen and not far, he hoped, from Hati and Norit... not forgetting the au'it, either, who was little suited to indignities like this.

The door was shut, a plain brown panel, showing no more feature than the wall and no means to open it.

It was cold like iron. He thought of the Ila's metal doors, the power of them, and refused to be daunted.

He had met this riddle before, and looked for a plate to touch.

”Ian!” he shouted at the door, and struck it with his hand.

The door opened. But it was Norit who appeared, Norit, dressed as he was, in the sand-colored gauze.

She simply stood there.

”Are you all right?” he asked. Her silence, her lack of joy, sent a chill through him. He embraced her as a man ought to greet his wife, and she acted as if he had never touched her before. Then she pushed away and went and sat down on the rumpled bed.

He found nothing right. His ears suddenly roared. His balance went uncertain, and Norit for a moment looked like an utter stranger to him.

The door was still open. He looked outside, down a metal hall like the vision of the cave.

But it was not the same hall: in small points, the number of suns and the number of doors, it was different than where they had been. They were about halfway down it, in a room to the side.

”It's a hallway,” Norit whispered. ”It's just a hallway. That's all it ever was, the cave of suns.”

”Have you seen all of this place? Have you met anyone? Who is the woman?”

”Luz.” Norit, who was a simple woman and a villager, never experienced in the outside, let alone the heart of mysteries. ”Her name is Luz.”

”Where's Hati?”

”I think she's somewhere near.”

”Have you talked to them?”

”They talk tome ,” Norit said, and shuddered. ”I can hear them.”

He could not. There was only the roaring. ”What is this place?”