Fallen (44 page)

He leaned in close and whispered in her ear. “Things out on the grassland. We've seen four but I think there may be more. Big. Fast.” But Nomi knew he had not told her everything. She sat up and crawled toward Noon and Rhiana, Beko by her side.

He held her shoulder just before she reached them, and whispered again. “They're strange. Like people, only different. Best to warn you.”

Nomi nodded, not quite sure what he meant. Once beside Rhiana, she pulled herself up the small incline and peered over the top. At first she could see nothing moving save shifting shadows thrown by bushes rustling in the breeze. The wind took her breath away for a beat—a cool gust that seemed to usher in the rising sun. It brought smells she did not recognize from places she had yet to visit.

She heard that cry again, followed by the same clicks and rattles as before. If there was language in there it was strange, and unrelated to anything she had ever heard. Then she saw the first shape. It emerged from the landscape two hundred steps away: tall, stooped, long legs marching it delicately but speedily across the grassland, long arms hanging down and ending in wide hands. Its head stood atop a short thin neck, and gray hair hung down in tied bunches around its face. It was too far away to make out for sure, but from what Nomi could see it looked almost human. And it wore clothing.

She gasped. “What the piss is that?”

“There are several of them out there,” Rhiana said. “Just wandering around. I've been watching them since sunup. Not sure if they're looking for food or just walking the night from their bodies. When they meet up, they communicate with those strange clicks, and they touch one another as well. I'd say they're half as tall again as me, but they're hunched down. And they're all wearing clothing of some sort, though most of it looks like rags tied on with string. Nothing too elaborate. I don't think you've found a new fashion for Long Marrakash.”

Nomi looked sidelong at the Serian, but she was not smiling. “Do you think they're dangerous?” she asked.

Rhiana shrugged. “No way of knowing, so for now I assume yes.”

“They must be the ones who made that tree,” Noon said.

“Maybe,” Beko said. He had moved up beside Nomi. “Maybe not.”

They watched the creatures for a while. Several of them gathered together and seemed to sit and talk. They were never quite still; their heads swayed, their bodies shifted as though waving in the wind. As the sun left the horizon, something seemed to alarm them, and they stood as one and ran quickly into the distance. In a few beats they were out of sight, their clicking calls still just reaching the Voyagers where they lay.

“They were definitely human,” Beko said.

Nomi frowned.
Almost,
she thought.
Or maybe they had been once.
Something about them bothered her, and it was not only their exaggerated appearance—longer legs, taller bodies. The way they had sat together talking, bodies shifting to the breeze, gray hair tied in elaborate-looking braids, their clothing rough and ragged but also cut in very particular ways . . .

“What do you think?” Rhiana asked. She stared at Nomi, obviously expecting an answer.

“I'm not sure,” she said. “I had no real idea of what to expect up here.” Rhiana grunted, nodded and went back to their camp.

“So what now?” Beko asked.

Nomi smiled. “Now we explore.”

RHIANA KILLED A
creature that looked like a cross between a rabbit and a sheebok. Its chunky back legs were still shaking as she dragged it back into their camp, and they only stopped when she gutted and skinned it. They debated briefly about the merits of starting a fire, but hunger overcame caution. Half an hour later they were picking slices of cooked meat from a stick propped over the fire, and it tasted incredible. Soft, moist, sweet, the smoke gave it a tang that negated the need for any herbs or spice. They ate in contented silence.

Rhiana extinguished the fire and buried the ashes, and they left the remains of the creature for scavengers.

They headed south. The plains rose and fell in gentle undulations as far as they could see, and maybe twenty miles in the hazy distance they saw the darker smudge of thickly forested slopes. The trees seemed to be various shades of red, and clouds hid the tops of whatever hills or mountains they skirted.

As they walked, Nomi thought of the Sleeping God. Without the parchment pages—and without Ramus's ability with languages—there was no way for her to tell where the mythical God was supposed to be. This plateau was huge. Twenty miles deep at least, and if it truly ran from east coast to west, several hundred miles wide. But they had seen firelight on the cliff that first night, and assuming it was Ramus and Lulah, they were climbing only miles apart. That gave her confidence. If Ramus had found a reason to climb in this particular place, then she could find it as well.

But as they walked south, a whole new aim presented itself in her mind. They were not only on top of the Great Divide, but also heading toward whatever might lie beyond. The joy of discovery was clear in her mind, a very sharp aim that had been temporarily appeased upon reaching the head of the Divide, but which now bit harder than ever before. South, there were hills or mountains, and beyond those . . . who knew? More mountains? Another new world?

She knew that at some point she would have to return to Long Marrakash, but such a return could wait.

“Shouldn't you be recording this somehow?” Beko asked as they walked.

“Can you draw, Captain?” Nomi asked, smiling.

“Badly.”

“Can you write?”

“Barely.”

“Badly and barely are about my limits as well. But I can see, feel and smell. And that's good enough for me.”

“But what will they say when we go back? What about the Guild?”

Nomi was silent for a while, thinking about what she wanted to say and what it really meant. It felt good and pure, but there was also an aspect of separation that she had not yet vocalized to anyone. “I'm doing this for me,” she said. “Voyaging . . . it's about fame or fortune, or perhaps both. For me, the Ventgorian trips were about fortune, and I've made that. But now we've found this place, I realize how superficial that really is. I've never known the true heart of voyaging, not like . . .”

“Ramus,” Beko finished.

“I only hope he's all right,” she said quietly. She looked east, her view across the landscape soon blocked by trees and the contours of this high place. The air smelled fresher and sweeter up here; the sky was a deeper blue and the sun was warmer on her skin than she had experienced for a long time. Ramus would have loved such differences. They would tell him that he was somewhere else, and Nomi prayed to whatever gods would listen that he was feeling and seeing them right now.

BY MIDDAY, THEY
had barely traveled two miles. The terrian was easy, but there was so much to see that they paused every hundred steps to examine something new.

They found snakes that carried hundreds of young on their backs. The serpents hissed and reared up when anyone drew near, but from a distance they seemed placid and calm. They ranged from yellow through to a deep brown, and their young waved infantile heads at the air, smelling every new scent. They saw fat, bulbous fungi that popped audibly when they were touched, releasing a mist of spores into the breeze. Noon worried about infection, disease and poison, but Nomi shrugged and carried on. If they were to contract a disease and die up here, it would happen, however careful they were.

Around the base of one large rocky mound, they saw hundreds of stones beginning to move. They ground and rumbled together, and it was only when the explorers approached closer that they saw legs protruding from the stones' undersides. There were small pincers hidden away too, flashing out when flies or bees came close and snapping back inside the stony shells as the creatures ate.

They moved on from one wonder to the next. Amazing new sights—animals or plants that resembled those they had known from Noreela but which displayed marked differences—and several new things they could not understand at all. They found a tall metal pipe protruding from the ground, ragged with splits and rusted tears, and they did not know what it was for. Several parallel trenches in the ground, thirty steps long, contained watery sand, tinged green by some sort of moss and smelling of rotting fruit. More pipes crossed these trenches, pierced with regularly spaced holes and knotted together in complex joins. “Something up here builds,” Beko said, but Nomi was more amazed at the extracted, melted and molded metals.

She welcomed mysteries such as these, because to understand everything would be to equate this place to Noreela. It was
not
Noreela. They had traveled beyond the world they knew, and there was still some way to go.

THEY FOUND THE
statue early that afternoon, about four miles in from the edge of the Divide. They had spent some time exploring a network of steaming pools and streams, and as they mounted a slope, they saw the shape outlined on top of the next small hill. It took an hour to reach, but long before they gathered around it and stared with a mixture of awe and disappointment, Nomi recognized what it was.

Carved from the bole of an old tree, the man gazed at them with black-painted eyes. It was obvious that the carving was quite old: the wood had cracked, parts of it were rotten and any sharp features had been smoothed by sunlight and weather. But there were signs that whoever had carved this image still visited. Garlands of dried flowers were gathered around its base like discarded clothes, and suspended from one wooden shoulder was a more recent floral tribute, still moist with decay.

“Who is it?” Noon said.

“Not me,” Beko said.

“But he's like us.” Nomi stepped forward, reached up and touched the wooden face. “Not like the things we saw. He's Noreelan.”

“Maybe there are human tribes up here as well,” Rhiana said.

Nomi stared into the dark eyes. The Serian was right, there could well be humans up here. Someone had written those parchment pages, after all. The humanoid figures they had seen that morning could well be capable of doing so, but there had been something wild about them that gave her doubt. Maybe they couldn't do it now, but what about in the past? A bird flitted by above them, and a shadow at the corner of the statue's mouth twitched.

Nomi blinked. She looked back at the others, then again at the statue.

“What?” Beko said.

Nomi shook her head. “Foolish.”

“What's foolish?”

She shrugged. “I feel like I know this face.” She was hoping they would laugh to diffuse her nervousness, but they looked more serious than ever.

“SO WHAT ABOUT
the Sleeping God?” Beko asked. They had left the carving behind, though Nomi could still see it if she looked back. She was glad that its eyes stared northward.

“That would be amazing,” she said. “But even if it does exist, there's more to this place than that.”

“I agree,” Beko said. “Let's leave the myths alone. For all we know, this is a land as large as Noreela.”

Nomi looked to the hills in the distance and the red-tinged trees. “It could be,” she said. “That's what drives me.”

“Scares the piss out of me,” Beko said, but she heard the excitement in his voice, and she was so glad that he was there.

Nomi reached out for his hand. When she turned to speak again, Beko's face exploded and he went down.

She would never remember what she was about to say.

_____

HIS EYE WAS
ruptured.
Look at me,
Nomi wanted to say, but he could not, because his other eye was already swelled shut from the bruising. His cheek and temple were wet with clear fluids and blood, and his left brow looked soft and sunken. He foamed at the mouth. Nomi wiped it away but he kept foaming, starting to shake now, and she could only wince as he squeezed her hand.

Something screeched and clicked, and she recognized those sounds instantly.

They emerged from a clump of bushes to their left, four of them rising on those long, thick legs until Nomi thought they would never stop. They were almost twice her height. They had the faces of people, though their faces were long and oval. And even their bodies, though elongated and impossibly tall, looked human.

But their viciousness and rage were unnatural. They spat and clicked as they came, spinning leather pouches loaded with heavy stones above their heads. One of them released another stone and Noon fell aside just in time. The creatures were fifty steps away.

Rhiana knelt, drew her bow, and fired. An arrow found a home in the lead creature's face and it went down, its screech pained, and painful to hear. The others paused as if amazed, standing like statues as their companion held the arrow with one large hand and scratched at the ground with its other hand and feet.

One of them clicked, the others answered, and they turned their attention back to the Voyagers.

Rhiana fired her last arrow. A creature turned impossibly quickly and the arrow bit through its arm, tip stabbing through its clothes and into its side, drawing a gush of bright red blood.