Marak walked behind the beast carrying the dead man, with a view of its legs and underbelly, mostly, as the stone-paved street rose up and up the city's broad terracing, up between the frontages of craft shops and warehouses and the better dwellings.

In a turn more the sunlight dimmed with dusk and colors lost their brilliancy. The day was over. And Marak walked in the wake of the beast, which, watered, stopped a moment to do what beshti rarely did, and moved on. Those afoot got the worst of it.

In their war here, his father's war, not only had they never breached these walls, they had never imagined the teeming ma.s.s of people that lived inside the holy city. He walked now within deep shadow of tall buildings and dusk, within a stench of smoke and rot and urine. He felt the slight coolth of perpetually shadowed stone as well as the cooling of the air that followed the sun's descent. Noon could hardly reach this place. He had not appreciated his last view of the sun outside. If he saw it rise again, he was sure now it would be his great misfortune.

High, high up the winding turns of the street they pa.s.sed now with little curiosity from the people, until the word must have pa.s.sed, and the residents of the holy city came out to jeer at the madmen, and to pelt them with rotten fruit-with the incredible luxury of the holy city, where there was food discarded, where the middens were richer than villages. Precious moisture ran with common waste down the sides of the streets, and fruit pulp slicked the stones underfoot.

The boy picked up a half-rotten fruit and ate it. The wife fell and soiled her knees in the muddy pulp.

Marak pulled her up in the next stride: it was no place to die, in such filth, after so long struggle to come here. She sang to herself as they walked, as water ran between the stones, as better food than many villages ever knew pelted them as common refuse.

"The devils will come down!" the potter yelled at their tormentors. "The devils live on the high hill, in the tower, and they will come down and dance at your funerals!"

At that defiance, the crowd flung more serious missiles. Marak fended a potsherd with his arm, but one of the mad went down: a barber, the man was, and a broken brick struck him in the head, toppling him in his blood.

At that the Ila's men shoved at the crowd and hauled the attacker out, bringing him along, too, beating him with their sticks.

Marak sheltered the wife from Tarsa against his side, away from the more accurate stone-throwers.

"Where is love?" she sang unevenly, faintly, as she climbed. "Where is shade in the desert? Where is my love gone?"

They suddenly pa.s.sed a gate, into a large square, before those who flung stares, not stones; and those were better behaved, but more chilling.

After that they came through a second gate, into the shadow of inner walls, and the reek of asphalt and oil. Steam went up here in rolling clouds. Rumor was true. Such was the wealth of the holy city that they had fuel to spare for furnaces, and gates moved by steam and not the strength of men or beasts. He had heard of it but never seen it.

He bore up the wife, who staggered against him. "Please," she said, "let me rest. Let me rest."

"Soon," he said. He could wish she had died quietly ,as the old man had died. She was a gentle soul.

She had no imagining of the possibilities in this place.

"What is that sound?" she asked when the gates groaned and gave a tortured sound, iron on iron.

"Machines," he said. "The machines of the Beykaskh."

She seemed not to understand him. Perhaps she had never heard how the Beykaskh made gates of iron and boiled water to make them move, or how the Ila, displeased, flung deposed ministers into the works of those machines. The wife from Tarsa wavered in her steps, and looked numb, exhausted as they pa.s.sed through the last gates, through the heart of the machines.

They were within the inner sanctum, the heart of the holy city. He had come where his father's armies had only hoped to come.

"This is the one," the captain of the Ila's men said suddenly, and seized Marak's arm, and drew him and the wife apart.

The wife fell to her knees, crying out for his help, and for someone named Lelie. No one noticed. She lay on the pavings and the besha that bore the dead old man walked sedately past her defenseless arm, scarcely missing her, stepping delicately over her. Marak saw it, held his breath, but walked obediently where the men bade him go.

This is the one, they said of him, but even now they accounted him no threat.

He would not lose his one chance for the sake of a gesture. He had fixed on one mad act as of some value to his father, as some way in which his father might say, and that the villages might say,Perhaps he was Tain's, after all .

If he was Tain's, if he was Tain's, then his mother was no wh.o.r.e, and his sister's honor was safe.

He had one chance. One chance. One chance. He had to be meek and tolerate everything until he found it.

Then the mad would have a name, as far as they told the story. Every name would be remembered, and his father would say,He was not so mad as the rest, was he ?

Chapter Two.

To every good man the Ila gave the nature of men, and to every good beast the Ila gave the nature of beasts. The Ila named them and divided them one from the other. She appointed them their use and life under the sun.

But even to the beasts of the desert the Ila's Mercy continually pours out her abundance.

Even the destroyers the Ila made for her use.

-The Book of Priests In here," the ila's men said, and made Marak duck, shielding his head from a low doorway. He wiped his eyes as his hair fell across his face, and consequently had grit in them, compounded with the sticky filth that clung to his skin and his hair and his clothes.

Blinking tears, then, he prepared himself for soldiers' rough handling, but saw no authority awaiting him, only four slaves, who stood holding towels and such in a little fountain courtyard dim with twilight.

"The Ila wishes not to be offended," one of the guards said.

So the Ila had indeed heard the news of Tain's misfortune in his son, and become, as he hoped, curious.

He would have the audience, and with no need for him to seek it, his most extravagant hopes realized.

The officers of the household, armed and watchful, kept their distance from him, but in an act of leaden, ordinary compliance he began to shed the ruined boots, which brought away shreds of old white skin.

New skin had grown, daily, to be worn away in blisters; it was his nature. It was the nature of all the mad, he had learned: they all healed well. Only the greatest injuries, like the boy's, could overwhelm their bodies' defenses.

The slaves took his filthy rags with disgust. With gestures-they did not speak-they wished him to stand beneath a device that poured down water, and pulled a chain. A flood rushed down on him, a chill rush that made his flesh contract. Between his feet, water that had pa.s.sed over his body stayed not to bathe him, but flowed out a drain so rapidly the puddle never showed soil.

Perhaps that water flowed from the drain out under the wall, and perhaps it flowed down the streets to carry the waste of the holy city, or perhaps, again, it pa.s.sed down clay pipes, to join the Mercy of the Ila, the drink of unknowing pa.s.sersby.

{Marak, Marak, Marak, his voices said, chiding him... or beckoning him to folly: he never knew.} Meanwhile the slaves washed his body with soft clothes, scrubbing in their ignorance at his tattoos, at the mark he wore, the abjori emblem, in blue above his heart, scrubbed at the killing-marks on his right hand.

"They will not come off," he said to them after enduring their efforts. Perhaps the slaves had never been outside the Beykaskh: at least they desisted when told. They loosed his hair and scrubbed it, and combed it with gentle fingers. The last of twilight was going. A slave brought out lamps and hung them in the open courtyard, providing a golden light.

They had him sit down, next, and by that light carefully shaved his face clean, a luxury he had not had in all the time of walking. They used a straight razor which if he had seized it would have been a fearsome weapon. But he waited. They were deft and quick, and even followed the shave with a soothing herbal, while he sat with his hands on his knees, the object of the guards' indolent stares.

There was no reason for shame. The long walk had worn him, but he had healed. He was thinner than he had been, but he was still strong. He was still Tain's son, no matter Tain had rejected him. He was still himself.

He expected clean clothes of some sort. It hardly made sense to waste so much water and clothe him again in garments foul with refuse. And indeed, they unfolded clothing from the protection of thick towels.

They gave him a shirt of cloth as fine as a bride's gown, shirtand trousers that felt strangelyold and worn to comfort as they slid over his skin. There was a belt, which was foolish to give a prisoner, but they gave it, all the same. They carefully combed his hair, and bound it with soft leather. Instead of the galling rope about his neck, they wished to place a light chain of ornate links, common bra.s.s, such as common folk wore. That alone he refused, wishing no Lakhtani chain on his neck, no matter their custom.

"He wants one of gold," the chief guard said to the slaves, mocking him, and added: "Let it be. It's no matter of importance."

Thatwas the importance. But it was not important in the guards' thinking, and he said nothing.

All these proceedings, he was sure, readied him to come into the heart of the Beykaskh, and near the Ila. It had fallen dark now, except their lamp. The slaves brought boots for his feet which fit amazingly well... so much care they took for his comfort. They must have measured his ruined ones, split seams and all. And where did one find an array of boots simply waiting?

And would he see the Ila tonight, and have his chance at this late hour? Or must he wait?

{Marak, Marak, the voices said, d.a.m.nably ill timed.} He shut his eyes, pretending weariness to conceal his distraction. But worse than the voices, that swinging sense came over him, the one that could take a man's balance.

"Come along," his guards said.

{Marak, the voices said.Marak. Get up. Walk.} He made a careful, practiced effort against that swinging feeling. He gained his balance. Above all things else he wished no restraint, no impediment to the one chance he might have at the Ila, and he had no need, for a moment, to pretend helplessness for his guards' sake. The structures of fire blinded him, and the world swung violently, always toward the east.

They led him by either arm, the captain and the guard, out that low fountain-court door and into the hallway.

More guards stood on duty here, men in the gilt-trimmed uniform of the elite of the Ila's men. Now it was certain where he was going. Now his palms sweated and his heart beat hard.Be silent ! he chided his voices, attempting to govern them, as he rarely could.

He succeeded. He faced stairs, and he climbed doggedly, at his guards' orders. He knew how he wished to die.

Chapter Three.

The Ila descended to the Lakht and established the center of the earth. Outside was the wasteland. Until that time there were no villages anywhere and there was no cultivated field.

The Ila established the Holy City and from it went out appointed authorities to establish other centers throughout the land, to widen the habitable lands, to drive back the vermin, and to enrich the earth with gardens.

-The Book of Oburan, ch. 1, v. 1.

He hoped for single audience.In his wildest hopes he wished to come very near the Ila, and to have her guards far away.

But to his disappointment he was not alone. A group gathered in an upper hall outside a set of ma.s.sive doors, a motley group of old and young, men and women, all dressed in the ordinary white and brown of the holy city. All the company had a haggard look. Some bore recent wounds. Were they the local harvest of the streets, Marak wondered?

But among them, along the edge, he saw the wife from Tarsa, the potter, the barber, and the rest that had come with him. Then he knew that he was not alone in this audience, only better dressed.

They must be all mad, the scourings of the Ila's search, not only from the villages of the west, but from all the land. There were that many more of them, filling the hallway as far as the corner.

The metal doors sighed heavily and opened, no hand touching them.

Beyond them was a narrow, pillared hall. At the end of the hall was a dais and a high seat, and on that seat was a figure robed in red.

The Ila. The source of all authority... deathless, immortal, so some said. A G.o.d on earth, priests maintained, and the Ila did not refuse their worship.

If she was a G.o.d, Marak proposed to find out. Under his brow, head bowed among the herd, he measured the length he must go to reach that figure. He imagined to himself dealing one, just one strong blow to that fragile-seeming neck before they cut him down.

Orders pa.s.sed in gestures, the permissive lifting of the Ila's hand, and the guards brought them forward as a group, for the Ila's examination.

Marak's heart beat fast. He had seen men and beasts run, even shot through the heart. He could perhaps reach her before the guards even organized an objection.

But until they offered to prevent him from a peaceful, even requested, advance, he made himself as obedient as the rest of the madmen.

Marak, the voices said suddenly, and the mad twitched and turned and spun for the Ila's amus.e.m.e.nt.

He restrained himself desperately from moving to that urge: it was his one breach from the rest, the one indignity he had refused all his life.

There were drawn blades all around them, guards stationed among the pillars. The Ila's men were justifiably anxious in this viewing of the mad. They waited for the afflicted to do something more extravagant to prove their madness, and now a guard prodded him in the side, curious about his difference.

Pride would not allow him. He had run into the desert as a boy. He had hidden his fits in storerooms, in privacy, in long rides into the waste. He had learned that the fits had had a rhythm: they came at certain hours of the day, at certain times in the night, regular as the calendar, regular as the moons in waxing and waning. He had learned to live with them, to pretend, to conceal the twitches and the urges.

But lately the fits had gone out of rhythm, out of the ordinary.

This manifestation now was out of rhythm, as if the Ila's very presence had provoked it.

{Marak, the voices said.Turn. Walk. Come. } And quietly, biting his lip until the blood came, he would not.

The mad, within the room, became agitated. The Ila sat observing them. An au'it sat nearby, writing, writing. One by one the records went down, as the guards separated each madman from the herd in turn for the au'it to record his name, his origin, his behavior, turning each back when they were done. The Ila seemed bored, impatient.

Then a signal pa.s.sed, a motion of the Ila's hand, and the guards held back the latest madman they had cut out of the herd.

"Tain's son," the Ila said, and the guards, letting go the one, prodded at Marak instead and moved him forward.

Now, Marak thought, antic.i.p.ating the next few moments, and became steady as any hunter. Hate fueled his patience. Desire kept his head down and held his gait to an ordinary shamble, all to come as close as he could.

They stopped him just short of the distance inside which he might move and not be stopped. The guards brought chains and put them on his hands. He bore that meekly, too: the chains were a weapon, bra.s.s chains, solid and capable of shielding a fist, of looping a throat, of cracking a skull. Then they put a spear backwards through the ring attached, and two men held it, but that was not enough. The spear, too, was a weapon within his reach.

With those precautions they moved him to the very foot of the Ila's seat.

A great calm came on him, even a sense of leisure in which he could satisfy his curiosity before he used his last chance. He looked up at the Ila, the tyrant, the ruler of all the world, as if he owned her.

"Marak Trin," the captain said, and the au'it wrote.

Then the traitor voices started in his skull, dinning:Marak Trin. Marak Trin. Marak Trin , a foolish, mindless echo, hindering him from clear thought.

In the desert, on the wide plains of the Lakht, in constant company with the mad, aware of the rest, the voices had grown louder and more insistent. He fought them down. He looked up at the red robes, the blood red robes, up to the Ila's face, and found it very aptly time to die, before the voices were all he heard. But he had never seen the like of her.

White, white skin, and gloved hands, and booted feet. On the Lakht, they valued white skin, skin the sun had not touched. They whitened the skins of brides and grooms with creams. They valued slender bodies that clearly had never lifted burdens or carried water, or scratched a living from the desert.

All these marks of beauty the Ila had. She wore a close cap of red silk, and inner robes of silk shaded like flame. She exuded wealth, and power, and, some said, holiness.

Yet she seemed frail, in size and strength so like his young sister, he was dismayed.

"Are you truly mad?" she asked him directly, as his sister might have asked, a question, an entangling snare of question that caught his mind and his heart. He had killed enemies. He had never killed a girl.

But he had never failed an intended target, either. He would; he would not; and in desperation he leapt at the steps. He dragged his guards with him. He hauled at the chains and had three men stumbling at his feet. He seized the spear and lifted his hands, aiming it at that slight figure.

A thunderbolt struck him, sizzled through bone and nerve and flung him back in a sliding course down the steps. The guards smothered him with their bodies, wrenched at the chains, and hit him, but that impact of bone on flesh was nothing, nothing to the thunderbolt.