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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 mass 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 passed now with little curiosity from the people, until the word must have passed, 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.
    â€œThe 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 passed 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.”
    â€œSoon,” 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.
    â€œWhat is that sound?” she asked when the gates groaned and gave a tortured sound, iron on iron.
    â€œMachines,” 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 passed 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.
    â€œThis is the one,” the captain of the Ila’s men said