All this went on for a good hour or more, the contriving and planning.

Mara thought, And this is the difference between having enough, as in Chelops, when all this business of keeping alive takes care of itself, just one of the things you do, and being on the edge, when you think of nothing else.

They slept, and in the night woke to see the dark outlines of two people trying to get in at the window, but the bars held. They slept again, and Mara dreamed of Meryx and woke thinking she was in his arms. But it was not the dream that had woken her. Dann was thrashing about and fighting in his sleep, and was muttering threats, "I'll kill you," with names Mara could not catch, but she thought she heard him say Kulik.

In the morning she told him he had been dreaming. He said he knew that: he had terrible nightmares most nights. She asked about Kulik, but Dann said that he was only one of the suppliers. Clearly he did not want to talk about it, and they went down, and were given hot tea made from some plant the woman said grew on the river bank, and some bread. They paid what she asked for, enquired if they could buy some bread, were given a few pieces, for a couple of little coins, and went as fast as they could to the river.

A big boat, about thirty paces in length, and half as much wide, was tied up to a stump, and people were already going aboard. Mara and Dann took their places on a bench under a little roof of reeds, and felt the wet river heat soak them and their clothes. There were tiny biting insects, in clouds. The passengers were making fans from anything they had, bits of clothing, their hands, even a flap of bread. Then a boy came running and jumped on to the boat just as it moved. He was selling fans made of river grass. Mara and Dann bought two and sat fanning away the insects, while the boy made a prodigious leap from the boat to the bank, earning applause, and the town they had scarcely seen moved away from them into the past.

And so Mara and Dann, who had known in their lives only drought and dust, thirst and anxiety over water, were floating on a river that seemed to them enormous; but it had been wider, they could see, for the water had, though not recently, filled the banks to the brim. Now the level was a good ten feet lower, and grass was growing over the part of the banks that had once known only lapping water and river weeds. And there were water dragons, who were lying on the banks, half in and half out of the water, some of them half as long as the boat. Two men propelled the boat, standing at the prow and at the stern, using long poles. That meant the water could not be very deep: when the river was full, poles would not have found the bottom to propel the boat from. The boatmen wore loose, baggy trousers tucked into their shoes, and tops that tied at the neck, and cloth tied tight over heads and necks to keep the midges off, but their faces were red and lumpy from bites. Their hands were inside bags of material tied at the wrists.

There were twenty passengers: men and women, and two children. Mara's eyes kept going to the children, to reassure her that they were healthy and well fed.

Mara believed that she might be pregnant. Or was it that she hoped she was? It seemed that her body yearned, craved, a child — or was it Meryx she was longing for? And if she was pregnant, what would Dann say, when everything was so difficult already?

North: he wanted to go north, north to water, leaving the drought behind. But were they going to stop at the first place not threatened with dryness? How far was North? What was North? From the map on Candace's wall North was only a whiteness, was ice and snow, covering half the world. She thought, Perhaps that is where all the water is, held in ice and snow, that can't move and flow? Is that what people from the South mean when they say that the water is up North?

It was very hot and the water dazzled. Mara drowsed and was woken by the plop and splash of the water dragons sliding into the water off the banks. These dragons had been in the rivers for thousands of years: the pictures on the walls of the Rock Village said so. And they were just the same, great clumsy monsters with long jaws full of irregular, ugly teeth and bulging with meat and confidence. Perhaps they planned to overturn this boat? If they all got together they were strong enough to do it. She asked Dann to ask the boatman in front, who said that sometimes when the boat was overloaded and low in the water the dragons might try to leap up and take a passenger. And did they succeed? "Oh sometimes," said the boatman, bad-tempered because of the midges. "Sit down and keep still, or they'll have a bite off you."

The day went on, so hot, so damp, a torment of midges, and the boatmen let down containers into the stream and brought up water which all the passengers drank and poured over themselves, and then they asked for more. Was there disease in the water? If so they were all too hot to care. They wanted only to drink. And then had to pee it out, over the edge of the boat, no one attempting much modesty or concealment, because of the languors of the heat. That day they stopped at sunset at a small town that was used to the boat travellers and took no notice of them. They all went together, for protection, to an inn that fed them root stew and bread and sour fruit, stewed. They all slept in a very big room, on reed mats, stretching out arms and legs, as naked as they could manage, trying to believe that it was cooler because it was night. But Mara kept herself covered. Her pallet was next to Dann's, so she could wake him if he had bad dreams.

In the morning they were off again. The river did not change, rolling along, glossy green and clear, because it was the dry season, with some green trees along it where there were birds, actually birds, most of which Mara and Dann had never seen. On either side the country was dry and yellowish, and tall dry grasses fringed the banks. This was the country that had once been the green part of Ifrik, long, long ago, with great forests, and innumerable feeder streams — so Candace had said — and those streams had baby streams running into them. Now no forests, only savannah, and water running slow and low between dry banks. For seven days they travelled up the river, stopping every night in little towns where the inns that served the river trade seemed all the same; and at the end of that time they had gone up Ifrik the breadth of Dann's forefinger laid in the dust of the map he drew to show Mara. And now there was a choice: to get off this boat and rest a little in the town that filled the fork between this tributary and the larger river, or to transfer to another boat, and go on, for this boat was returning to where it had started, which was where they had got on. Mara would have liked to stop, but Dann did not want to. He was driven by his need to go north, always north. Most of the passengers transferred to the new boat, a bigger one. None seemed to know where they were going, only that it must be better than where they had come from. Not all were from Chelops: some were from Majab. Mara and Dann had come farther than any of them, but were discreet about their origins. Bad enough that the passengers from Chelops knew that they were Mahondis, and hated them for it. Mara would see how Dann looked from face to face of these people, the close, intent look she knew so well: was he recognising faces, friends or enemies, from his time in the Tower? If so, he gave no sign. At night Mara always lay within touching distance, because she was afraid of what he might say in his sleep, or shout out if she did not wake him fast enough from his nightmares.

This river they were on now was a very different affair. It was wider, and though the top part of its banks showed that it had shrunk in its bed, it was still much deeper than the river they had been on, which now seemed a mere stream in comparison. To use poles here was not possible; there were two oarsmen on each side, and a man to steer. This boat was lower in the water, and kept to the middle of the river, well away from the dragons that crowded its banks. On the tributary, towns and villages had appeared infrequently, but here they seemed almost continuous. All were of baked mud bricks, with reed thatched roofs — clearly there were no forests near this river: on either side spread the thorny scrub of semi-desert, and even, in patches, the hot yellow glare of real desert. Thick reeds grew along the banks, and clumps of bamboo. The trees were all varieties of palm. This landscape was new to all the passengers, and the boatmen had to keep explaining what they were travelling through.