Fallen (15 page)

Something moved before him. A shadow shifted, left the shade of a wall, crossed the ruined temple and faded slowly into sunlight.

A wraith.

Ramus gasped, reaching for breath, leaning his elbows on his knees and watching the book tumble to the ground. It landed with blank pages facing up, and his fingers spasmed and let the charcoal fall. It bounced from the paper, left its own random mark, bounced again. Ramus saw nothing in the shape given life.

“Who can truly face their gods?” Ramus whispered.

The pain in his head slammed him once. Then he sat back and sighed, listening to the Serians chatting beyond the walls, birds calling from tree to tree, and he looked up and saw the same sky beneath which they all existed.

NOMI WALKED FROM
the ruin toward the ravine walls. She did not like the feel of the place, and Ramus's strange behavior made it worse. She knew that he could withdraw into himself when faced with something that fascinated or perplexed him, but she hated being subject to his sudden mood swings.

She glanced back at the old temple. She could just see him past one of the tumbled walls, sitting on a fallen stone with the book open on his legs before him.
He made me a part of his title,
she thought.
He's making me a part of his book.
The urge to learn to read was strong, and perhaps when this voyage was over she would do just that. The fame would ensure that she would never have to work again. But the thought of sitting in dusty old libraries poring over the yellowed pages of books written centuries before she was born . . . she could find no allure in that. She'd much rather come out into the world, sit around a campfire and hear history related by the likes of Konrad. Tonight the Serians would tell another story, and tomorrow morning she and Ramus would know more than they had before. She had always thought word of mouth a more honest, immediate method of relaying history down through the ages.

Ramus seemed to drop the book and lean forward to pick it up. Then he leaned back and looked around himself at the walls, the ruin, the sky.

Nomi turned her back on Ramus and stared up at the lip of the ravine. The wall before her was sheer, speckled here and there with tufts of moss and heather, and she could see a few birds' nests gripping the small ledges. The birds themselves were keeping well out of sight. She wondered whether their ancestors had nested here and watched this temple being built, and the richness of time washed over her. She wondered what language the builders had spoken, whether they had used slave labor, what they had looked like, what clothes they had worn. And for an instant, she considered that a Sleeping God itself may have overseen construction.

Nobody knew just how long ago the Sleeping Gods had supposedly gone down.

She looked at Beko where he stood at the mouth of the ravine.
Ramus called him my captain,
she thought.
Perhaps I'd like that to be so.

There was a sudden movement at the ruin and Ramus emerged, carrying his blank book by one open cover like an injured bird. He looked around, lost and frantic, until he set eyes on her.

“You were quick,” she said, but she could see that something had happened.

Ramus stared at her for a heartbeat too long before smiling and shaking his head. He looked down and closed the book slowly, deliberately, taking too long.
Composing himself,
Nomi thought.

“Not much new here,” he said.

“Except?” Nomi hurried to him, ignoring the flutter of activity from the Serians listening to their exchange.

“Except nothing,” he said.

“Ramus?”

He shook his head. “Just a funny turn.”

“You feel unwell?”

“No. Maybe it's the heat, or . . .”

“This place.” She smiled and touched his arm. “You always get so involved.”

“Yes,” he said. “Involved.” He walked away, holding the book to his chest as though he had something to hide.

“Ramus!” Nomi called.
His illness?
she thought.
Or something else? I really need to know. Not for him or for the voyage, but for me.

He paused and looked over his shoulder.

“If you're unwell, we can turn around,” she said.

“I'm not unwell, Nomi.” He looked at the temple he seemed so keen to leave behind. “Some places have echoes, that's all.”

Nomi listened, and watched, and when he walked away, she saw Beko staring at her. She turned her back on all of them and looked at the ruins of the temple to the Sleeping Gods. A strange place, so old and well constructed for its time that much of it still stood. And she thought,
He's lying.

“Let's get back to the horses,” Beko said. “I have a campsite in mind for the night, but it's a good twenty miles on.”

“I'll ask him,” Nomi whispered. A bird took flight from one of the nests in the cliff wall, as though it had been listening for these words. She watched it fly, wondering how many other secret mutterings it had shared.

WHEN HE REACHED
his horse, Ramus risked one more look at the book. Past the page he had titled back in Long Marrakash, the first blank page was now marked by the dropped charcoal.

When he had bent to pick up both book and charcoal, he had made another mark. An accident. A fumble, a slip of the hand.

But when he had grasped the book by its cover, and when it had swung down to hang at an angle from his hand, those random marks had manifested into images he could understand. It was Old Noreelan, with the pictorial quality so common in tomes about the Sleeping Gods.

He looked at it one more time, and even in the heat he could not withhold a shiver.

It said,
Never wake the fallen.

Chapter 7

THEY RODE HARD
that afternoon, through the heat of the sun and the dust thrown up from the dried ground, and by the time Beko called a halt they were all ready to stop. He rode on ahead with Rhiana and Konrad, the three of them spread out across the trail. Nomi knew that they were making sure the campsite he had in mind was safe. They were much closer to the border with the Pavissia Steppes now, and it was not unheard of for marauder parties to make sorties into Marrakash.

She dismounted and watched Ramus do the same.

He had said very little that afternoon. She'd ridden beside him much of the time, but the moment had never seemed right to ask what had bothered him at the temple. He had returned the book to his backpack and hung it on his saddle, and his expression had looked uncomfortable rather than disturbed. Whether that was because he knew she was watching, Nomi did not know.

“I'm sore and aching and I'd kill for a bath,” she said.

Ramin laughed. “I wondered where the smell came from! And there I was, blaming my sweet horse.” He leaned forward and clucked and whispered into his beast's ear.

“Watch who you abuse, Ramin. I've decided that I'm cooking tonight.”

The Serian gave her an easy smile and touched his chest, lowering his head in a casual apology.

Nomi laughed. She felt fine. These Serians were good, and that gave her more comfort than she could have hoped for.

But Ramus . . .

She walked to him, tapped him on the shoulder and refused to drop her gaze when he turned around.

“Leave a weary old man alone,” he said at last.

“You're only ten years older than me.”

Ramus shrugged. “I
feel
older. Probably all the hard living I've chosen, and the good living you've endured.”

“What's wrong?” she asked, lowering her voice. She did not want the Serians to think there was a problem. Beko she could talk to if necessary, but Ramin, Lulah and Noon were still unknown to her. They made her feel safe, but the farther they went from Long Marrakash, the harder trust was won.

Ramus glanced over her shoulder, obviously thinking the same thing. “Just a bad feeling at the temple,” he said. He patted the backpack still hanging on his saddle.

“Ramus, in every story I've heard, they're benevolent Gods.”

“Of course they are. Benevolent
Sleeping
Gods. Who are we to wake them?”

“If it's even there. And who's to say we'll wake it?”

He came in close, his nose almost touching hers. Nomi was aware of Lulah looking their way, but she would not pull back. She could smell Ramus's breath, feel the heat radiating from his face.

“You really think that if we go there and find a Sleeping God, things will stop with that?”

“I don't know,” Nomi said. “But we came on this voyage together. And nothing happens that we don't both agree on first.”

He pulled away, and uttered a noise that may have been a laugh. “You've always believed you're so central to your life,” he said. “But no one is. We're all small players in a much larger game.” He touched the backpack again. “This is already way beyond us.”

“What did you write in your book, Ramus?”

“Nothing. There was nothing to write. I sat in the temple and read the walls. That's all.”

“Let me see.”

He smiled at her, but it was an ugly expression; not quite a sneer, but something with a dash of madness buried deep. “You can't read,” he said.

“Beko's back,” Noon called.

Nomi turned around and Noon, Ramin and Lulah were watching her and Ramus curiously. She tried not to catch their eyes.

Beko and the others arrived, and the captain dismounted. “The place I mentioned is just up ahead, on the other side of that low hill. It's even better than it was last time.”

“Better?” Nomi asked.

Beko smiled. “You'll see. It's the last night we'll be camping in Marrakash, so I think it's only fair we take advantage of the safety.”

They mounted up and rode, and Nomi kept pace with Beko. She did not look back to see where Ramus was. She felt certain that she was being watched, but it could have been the Serians' curiosity about their employers' exchange.

Let him play his games,
she thought.
Let him see doom in every tumbled wall. This will be the voyage of my life, and I intend to enjoy it.

She looked sideways at Beko and he grinned. And she wondered just what he had planned for that evening's campfire entertainment.

NOMI HAD BEEN
determined to cook their meal that evening. But when she mentioned it to Beko, he shook his head.

“Believe me, let Rhiana cook tonight. We've been here before, and she knows what she's doing.”

“What's so special about here and tonight?” Nomi asked.

“Rhiana?” Beko said.

The tall Serian dropped gracefully from her horse. “It's a meal you'll remember for a long time,” she said. “Or maybe not at all.”

Beko had certainly found them a beautiful place. Shielded from the cool evening breeze by a rocky outcrop, the level area was perfect for camping, with a soft bed of short grass and a scattering of stones with which to build a fire pit. A stream sprang from the ground to one side, gurgling merrily as though relieved to have found its way out of subterranean darkness. The marshy ground around the stream's birthplace was home to a profusion of small trees, bushes, orchids and a mix of berry shrubs. Some of them hung heavy with early fruit, while others rustled and shimmied with life. Nomi clapped her hands and watched small birds take flight. Lizards darted away into the cover of rocks, and a larger, more cautious creature went deeper into the undergrowth.

“You sure you want us to camp this near to so much wildlife?” Nomi said dubiously.

“I've camped here before,” Beko said. “I've never seen anything poisonous or harmful.”

Ramus sat across the clearing, leaning against a tree with hands on knees and eyes closed. He kept his backpack close.
Let him play his games,
she thought again.

She turned back to Beko. “So, what are we eating?”

“That's up to you and me.”

BEKO LED NOMI
across the stream, through a bank of heavy shrubs and down into the borders of a small forest at the bottom of the hill. It was cool beneath the trees, calming, the sound of the stream complimented by the gentle swish and sway of the canopy in the evening breeze. It felt as though they had entered nature rather than disturbed it; birds continued singing, and Nomi saw the shadows of three small deer nosing through the bracken deeper in the forest. She did not mention them to Beko.

That was another way Ramus mocked her.
If you had to kill your own food,
he would say,
you'd live on root vegetables and berries.
Well, now she was hunting with Beko. And if they were to eat as well as he promised this evening, something had to die.

But not the deer. She walked quickly ahead, stomping her feet and stepping on a fallen branch. The crack sounded like a whip. The deer shapes froze and then melted quickly away between the trees, almost as if they were shadows that could disperse rather than run.