Hammerfall

by C. J. Cherryh

  “Take that woman out!” the Ila said, and the guards moved at once.

  Norit held up her hand abruptly, as yet untouched, and turned, and walked of her own accord toward the curtain.

  There she stopped, faltered, fell like the dead.

  Marak started to move without thinking. But guards had reached Norit, and felt of her pulse.

  “Fainted,” a guard said.

  “It’s Luz in her,” Marak, appealing to the Ila, for fear what consequences Norit might suffer. “The body is only Norit. She’s an honest woman, a shy, gentle woman . . . she’d never say what Luz said. She wouldn’t know how to answer you.”

  “And are you Marak, and only Marak?”

  He had never wondered. It was a terrifying question. “As far as I know.”

  “And this?” The Ila gave a wave of her gloved hand toward Hati.

  “Hati. An’i Keran. She knows the desert. She knows the way to the tower as well as I do. She helped me reach Oburan.” He had no idea of the Ila’s motives in asking, or her intentions afterward, and had no idea whether it was better for Hati to be important or invisi-

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  ble, but now he had no choice. “Out on the pans we’ve seen two storms on the way. Stars fall in their thousands. We passed places where they make pits in the sand. We saw rain, on the Lakht. Luz said the world would change. And it’s changing all around us. The earth is shaking. The storms are like nothing anyone’s ever seen.” He had trouble thinking of the wreckage the other side of these canvas walls, but it was all around her: how could she be ignorant of it? “She says we’re almost out of time. That something worse is coming.”

  “I trust all the things you saw on your journey are in the au’it’s book,” the Ila said with a glance at their au’it, and the au’it nodded slightly. “So. I will read them at my leisure.”

  “Everything we saw in our visions,” Marak said, desperate for time to make his point, such as it was, “everything we saw came true.

  All the mad had the same visions. And now we three, Hati and I, and Norit, as far as I know, we’re the only ones who see visions beyond those. We see rings of fire, spreading over villages. But if we come to the tower, Luz claims she can keep everyone safe there. I don’t know what the truth is. I don’t know who’s right. I told you I’d come back, and I came back, and I’ve made my report, such as I can. I don’t know what’s right.”

  “Come here,” the Ila said, beckoning, and beckoning twice called him forward, and forward again, and a third time, until he stood face-to-face with her.

  The earth shivered under them, a little tremor, the like of which happened hourly.

  “Lay your hand here,” the Ila said, and indicated the arm of her chair.

  He by no means trusted he would be safe to do that. Yet he did.

  Within her place of power, the Ila’s directions were the only safety at all.

  “Captain,” she said, holding out her hand to the side. “Your knife.”

  Marak did not move. He looked at her eye to eye as she held out her hand and Memnanan gave her his belt-knife.

  She clenched her fist and stabbed the blade down into his forearm. She was not adept with weapons. The point hung on the gauze and turned, though it scored his arm deeply enough. Blood ran down and divided at his wrist, thin streams that dripped down past the arm of the chair.

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  It was a demonstration of her power to harm, perhaps. He demonstrated his own, not to flinch from her threats.

  “You may move back,” the Ila said then calmly, and handed the knife to the captain.

  Marak stepped back, blood dripping off his fingers. He disdained to stop it. Knowing it was a test or a chastisement, he knew he had had worse, and stared still straight into the Ila’s face, as she stared at him, a long, long while.

  Then the Ila dismissed them all with an abrupt gesture. “Care for them! Give them my hospitality. —Don’t bandage the wound.”

  That was a strange exclusion, Marak thought, relieved and stunned. He bowed and, with Hati, went where Memnanan directed, the rings singing on the rods, and singing again as the servants drew the curtains together again. Guards carried Norit and brought her with them, unconscious, unaware, unresponsive . . . but safe.

  The servants directed them into a narrow chamber still within the huge tent, a curtained area warmly lit with lamps.

  There Memnanan drew the curtain aside, and the Ila’s women-servants attended Norit, and wished them to separate, the guards urging Marak alone to a second chamber, but not far. It was apparently for modesty, and he did not resist.

  Memnanan stayed with him there a moment, as men-servants stripped off the gauze robes. “Did you lie?” Memnanan asked him when he stood naked.

  “No,” he said. The servants turned back the carpets, laying bare the sand beneath, and moved him onto that spot beginning to wash him with sodden, herb-smelling towels. One overwhelming question had fallen unasked in Norit’s assault on the court; and to ask it might bring down consequences as yet unconnected—but not to ask might lose him all chance to ask. The Ila’s honesty was in question; so was Luz’s.

  And he cast back his one measure of truth, and promises kept. “I didn’t lie, in there.—The Ila promised my mother’s safety, and my sister’s, if I came back. Is that true? Is my mother here? Is my sister?”

  The slaves had stopped their work. Memnanan studied him and bit his lip. “What if I said she was here?” Memnanan was no fool, to give away the Ila’s points in advance; but he was a decent man, Marak had sensed it once, and he believed it now, in the silent war in Memnanan’s eyes.

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  “I’d believe you if you said so,” Marak said.

  Memnanan changed the subject. “Your arm has stopped bleeding.”

  It was an inconsequence. Marak bent it, glanced at it, expecting what he would see, that the wound was dry before the blood was.

  The area had grown warm with fever, and would swell.

  He had denied all his life that he more than healed quickly, foolish notion. Now he knew that what lived in his blood would keep him alive through far worse than this. It might be a disadvantage.

  “The Ila will hear you again,” Memnanan said in leaving, “I’m relatively sure of it. Ask her about your relatives.”

  “The people out there . . .” Marak began, and Memnanan stayed from letting the curtain drop between them. “Did she call them in, or did they come?”

  “They came. When the misfortunes began, where else would they go, but Oburan? One village passed another on the road, from farthest west inward, from south to north. So the trickle became a flood.

  They’ve left most of their harvest in the fields. They’ve eaten most of their provisions. Now they deplete Oburan’s.” Memnanan divulged his own worries, the coming, undeniable privations. “We can hold out a while. This tower you saw . . . this green-sided river . . . can it supply all the people in the world?”

  “I don’t know how many. It supplies a good many already. If she hears me,” he said. “If she listens, then we have that much chance. If she asks you, tell her that. I could have stayed there in safety. I chose to come here, for my mother’s sake, to rescue her, and anyone else I could.”

  “And the Ila?”

  “I made her a promise. I’m here. I came back.”

  “So you did.”

  “Is she disposed to listen?”

  “The earth shook. Everything came down. I don’t know what her disposition is. But you were right in what you guessed. And the woman said far too much.” Memnanan had already told him far too much, himself. Memnanan let the curtain drop and left him to the servants.

  “Omi,” they said, and came with their basin, and poured clear water over him, and washed his hair.

  “I
can wash myself!” came from beyond a curtain, and his spirits lifted. Hati was not threatened, or bullied. Hati was Hati.

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  It was Norit he could not account for. He knew that Memnanan was right, that Norit was deeply at risk. He saw no way to help her, more than he had already done, and had a slashed arm to show for it. He could argue with the Ila for Norit’s life. He might have his way, if the Ila wanted the things he had to offer.

  But what stopped Luz? What prevented Luz making things worse?

  The servants dried his hair, dried him, gave him a sleeping robe of fine blue cloth, and drew back the curtain. Hati was there, damp and not yet robed, water a fine sheen on her dark skin. She cast a burning glance at the female servants, snatched the robe from their hands, and slipped it on, disdaining to fasten it.

  The servants ebbed out of the chamber, through the curtains as she came to him. Hati wished to see his arm, which had already grown fevered and swollen.

  “It will heal,” he said. But Hati knew that, no less than he.

  “Where’s Norit?” He failed to see her anywhere about the chamber.

  “They took her away,” Hati said. “I don’t know where.”

  Hati’s bath chamber provided a gilt-framed bed, and he led her to it, and they lay down, under the bronze lamps, weary, and able at least to rest. Thunder rumbled in the skies, and more than once they felt the earth give a slight shudder. That brought the crack and crash of stone as the nearby ruin settled.

  “She’s too proud to listen,” Hati said, as they lay there wrapped in each other’s arms. “She’s lost everything she had, and I think she’s too proud to take this offer.”

  “You were supposed to leave and go with the beshti,” he said.

  “You were supposed to be with Tofi, safe, so I didn’t have to worry.”

  “Not as I see it.”

  “You saw your tents. The Keran are here. Could you go to them?”

  Hati shook her head, a tumble of moist braids on his arm, a scent of oils and herbs. “No. And if the Ila agrees to be sensible and go, we’ll all go. And if she doesn’t, I’ll go and tell the Keran the truth, and then see what they do.”

  “Don’t threaten her.” He moved his left hand over her braids, smoothed her brow as she leaned her head against him. “Escape this place. You can walk out there, change your robe, and be one of ten thousand.”

  Hati heaved a long, deep sigh, and in that sigh was the chance of violence and dire actions considered, and denied.

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  “Only with you. If you wish me to leave, man of my choice, we both go to my tribe.”

  “Memnanan hinted that my mother and my sister might be here.”

  “Fine. We’ll rescue them. We’ll go east. We know where the stars fall. We’ll go fast through that part.”

  It was dreaming out loud.

  And it was dangerous, counting the thin curtains that surrounded them. The whole of his life had turned fragile, and all of life he trusted, all of life he held as his was in his hands, in Hati’s slim, hard arms, in the confident look in her eyes. There might only be this.

  They might die at any moment. And life had never been worth more to him.

  “The Ila knows about the healing, doesn’t she?” Hati asked.

  “I think she does know,” he said. Above the tent he heard the thunder, and heard the distant shift of uneasy stone in the ruins. He was too weary to make love. He thought that Hati was, too. They simply looked at one another until Hati’s eyes began to drift shut, and then did close.

  He lay very, very still, for Hati’s sake, despite the muttering of heaven and earth, and had one lengthy sleep toward what he thought must be dawn.

  Then men-servants came in and provided them clothes, and brought them dried fruit and fresh bread, with butter . . . butter, which was a rare treat.

  Memnanan came next. “Marak Trin,” he said. “Come. The Ila wishes to speak to you.”

  Hati was immediately concerned, and was a move away from getting up to go with him, but Memnanan had a word for her, too.

  “Stay here. He will be safer if you do.”

  Hati sank back down and cast him a look as if to ask if he thought that was the truth.

  “Do as the captain asks,” Marak said.

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  15

  It is the Ila’s will that the abjori should exist, and at her pleasure and on a day to come, they will cease to exist: for this hour they are the trial of her people, gathering all her enemies together so that everyone may know them.

  — The Book of the Ila’s Au’it

  MEMNANAN BROUGHT HIM ALONE THROUGH THE MAZE

  of veils, stopped him in a narrow space, and nudged his arm to gain his attention.

  “The Ila spent the entire night with the au’it,” Memnanan said.

  “Watch yourself. Rein back that temper of yours. This time it won’t serve you, or the women.”

  “Why do you warn me?” Marak asked, trying to catch the man eye to eye. “You being the Ila’s man, why should you warn me?”

  “Would you come this far, through so much, to tell her a lie?”

  It was the plain truth, he discovered of himself. He was not set on the Ila’s destruction.

  Then what don’t you believe? he wanted to ask Memnanan, seeing Memnanan believed him that far. What don’t you believe, and what doesn’t she?

  But Memnanan was the Ila’s man.

  “Come with me,” Memnanan said, and led him through the last three curtains, where the Ila sat as she had sat last night, with the au’it by her. Another au’it—who might be theirs—sat nearby, on a carpet at the side of the chamber. Lamps still burned here, hung on golden chains, but with the leaden light seeping through the canvas the lamps seemed less bright than last night.

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  “Well,” the Ila said. “Well.” She held out her red-gloved hand and beckoned him. “Come,” she said. “Show me your arm this morning.”

  Marak came close enough and pushed up his sleeve, no more surprised than she to find it only pink flesh.

  “So,” the Ila said.

  “I heal well,” he said, letting fall his loose sleeve. “I always have.”

  “So again,” the Ila said. “And do you understand the makers, as this Luz calls them? The nanoceles?”

  “No. I don’t, at all.”

  “Falling stars,” the Ila scoffed. He was accustomed to shame, regarding the visions. But these were no visions. He had seen the pits where they fell, and he would not be dissuaded.

  “There are,” he said.

  “So this Luz has appointed herself our savior. Our god. And wants me to go to her.”

  “She wants everyone.”

  “Oh, doubtless she does! You’re still mad,” the Ila said. “Have you looked about this tent? Do you see the size of this encampment? And you’ll lead us all to the edge of the Lakht?”

  It was a question, a very terrible question. And the aui’it wrote it in their books.

  “If we have to do it, we have to do it,” Marak said quietly. “These encamped are the villages. They have their harvest tents, and beshti enough to get here. There are the tribes, who know how to get anywhere they choose to go. All I have to do is tell them ’beyond Pori,’

  and they’ll know.”

  “And will this Luz stop the fall of stars?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think she can.” That sort of honesty was his besetting fault. It had gotten him his father’s chastisement a hundred times before he could learn prudence. But he plunged ahead. “I don’t know what she can and can’t do. Or what you can. She’s a stranger.

  I came to ask you, can you stop this?”

  Perhaps no one had ever asked the Ila to do something impossible for her. Sh
e frowned at him, frowned long and hard.

  “Such faith.”

  “I don’t have faith,” he said. “I don’t trust strangers.”

  “Or me.”

  “At least you’re not a stranger.”

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  “So she wants me to come there. For what?”

  It was the foremost question, and he could not answer that.

  “If we stay here,” the Ila said, and in that little time the earth shivered and shook, so that the aui’it gripped their books tightly as they wrote. “If we stay here, we will die. Do you believe that?”

  “I know that for a truth,” he said, trying to gather his wits, beset by her and the restless earth. “I know the way to the tower beyond Pori.” It struck him that the Ila had sent him to Pori, not to the west, not to the north, not to the south, but specifically to Pori. She knew where the tower was. She had known before she sent him.

  How much else had she known before she sent him?

  “And you can guide us,” the Ila said.

  “If I can’t, I have Norit.”

  “You have Norit,” the Ila scoffed. “Luz has Norit.”

  “When Luz is done with her,” he said, “she’s my wife.”

  “Your wife!”

  “Norit has no part in what Luz does.”

  “Have you?” the Ila asked him sharply. “Have you any part in what Luz does?”

  He asked himself. And shook his head. “No.” He added, because it was the absolute truth, “I don’t trust Luz.”

  The Ila lifted her chin, looked down at him with hard and suspicious eyes. “Do you trust me more?”

  “You never offered me anything.”

  The Ila made a bridge of her gloved hands. “Oh, but I did.”

  He shook his head, denying it. “I asked a favor of you, and you agreed. You never offered me anything.”

  “So I sent you out,” the Ila said, “a man who eluded my patrols for three years, and this Luz took you up as quick as seeing you. Or quicker. She knew who you were. I doubt she had to listen to rumor to know you for the great Marak Trin Tain. You are her prize among the mad. What did she offer you?”