Fallen (47 page)

Ramus reached out for the first bulky shape, scraped moss from its surface and leaned over to see what was revealed. It was a large wooden box, about the size of the coffins some of the Cantrassan peoples used to bury their dead. He wondered whether they would at last see the builders of this place, or at least their time-withered remains.

“What's in there?” Lulah asked.

“Put your sword to the lid and we'll see.”

Lulah probed beneath the lid with her blade and heaved. It came off with a screech of metal leaving wood, and flipped over onto another box.

A cloud of dust wafted from within, and Ramus gasped. He knew that smell, that texture to his mouth and nose, because he worked with this so much. Old parchment.

“Let the light in,” Ramus said, and Lulah stepped aside.

The box was filled with rolls of parchment. Forty or fifty of them, neatly stacked side by side. A few at one end of the box were slumped into a decayed mess where moisture had penetrated, but the others were still strong and whole. Ramus reached out and touched one, almost afraid that it was some sort of hallucination brought on by his illness.
Is Nomi seeing this right now,
he wondered,
and I'm just dreaming it?
But the parchment was rough, dry and brittle beneath his touch, and when he brought his hand to his face he smelled the scent of ages.

“Three pages.” He sighed. “Three pages brought us so far. And now, look. Look at this.” He lifted out one roll and knelt, turning into the light from the open doorway. He unrolled carefully, wincing as he heard the crackle of the outer page splitting, but the inner sheets seemed to unfurl with little complaint.

“What does it say?” Lulah asked sharply. “What's it about?”

Ramus did not know. Some of the language he could recognize from the pages in his backpack, but much of what was symbolized there was a mystery to him. And that made him smile.

“I don't know,” he said. “Perhaps it's the history of a new world.”

“A new world that died,” Lulah said. She leaned over the box and looked inside, sniffing lightly at the dusty, age-rich scent.

“Maybe,” Ramus said. “But like I said, there are ruined places in Noreela as well. People move on.”

“Usually for a reason.”

A reason,
Ramus thought, and he scanned the page before him for anything that could represent a Sleeping God. There was nothing immediately evident, and he lifted that sheet to see the one beneath.

“We should go,” Lulah said.

“But—”

“You'll have time to read your books, but not before we know this place is safe. We have no idea—”

The sound came from far away but it was different from any they had heard before. A clicking, throaty noise, obviously made by something larger.

Lulah glanced at Ramus, then went for the door, low and quiet. She pressed herself to the wall and scanned the street outside.

Ramus let go of the parchment and it rolled back into its original shape.
So much here,
he thought, but looking at Lulah tensed by the door, braided hair swinging gently as she squatted there ready, he knew that she was right. There was much to see and know, but safety must be their first concern.

If the Sleeping God really was close, perhaps here he would find directions for how and where to find it. Or perhaps it had been found already.

The noise came again, this time from farther away. Lulah retreated from the door until she was beside Ramus.

“I can't see anything,” she said. “But I thought I heard something big moving through the village.”

“How big?”

She looked at him, her one eye twinkling. “How should I know?”

Ramus picked up the parchment and held it to his chest. Lulah glanced at it then away again, and when she returned to the door, he followed.

They waited for a while, and when the noise did not return, Lulah led the way out into the street once more. Ramus helped her lean the door back against the doorway, to protect what lay inside as much as to leave things as they had found them. Then they headed cautiously south, and within a hundred steps they reached the stream. The timber bridge was strong, though the decking had rotted through here and there, and as they left the village behind Ramus felt a sense of relief.

There was a whole new civilization here! The implications for Noreela were only just impressing themselves upon Ramus, feeling their way through his shock and tiredness, and his fear of what may be sleeping.
Another reason to never go back,
he thought.

The carved human face glared at him from the wall of the final building, and he wondered whether the decision to reveal or hide what they had found—and may yet find—was even his to make.

BEYOND THE VILLAGE
there was a path leading into the forest. Lulah said it could have been an animal trail, but her nervousness was obvious as they followed it in between the trees.

They found the first stone man a mile south of the village. From a distance, it looked like a natural rock formation beside the path, but as they drew closer Ramus made out the features that could not hide what this was. His right arm had broken off, the break smoothed over time, and his solid face had been assaulted by the weather so that the features were blurred and indistinct. But it was obviously a man upon whom those words Ramus knew had been used, because around his feet they found the remnants of clothing, a rusted knife and a charm on a cracked leather thong.

Ramus picked up the charm, his eyes never leaving the man's vague face.

Lulah stood back, eye wide and hand closed around the handle of her sword. “Is this what Konrad became?” she said.

Ramus felt the dead Serian's finger hanging against his chest, a guilty weight. “Maybe,” he said. “They're words I learned, but I don't really know how to wield them.”

“Someone here does.”

Ramus turned from the petrified man, weighing the charm in his hand. It was a piece of hardwood, hewn into a horn or tusk and holed through the heavy end for the leather cord. Words had been carved into it, but he could not make them out. He was not even sure whether he knew the language. But he knew the intent.

“This is Noreelan,” he said, and his heart sank as he vocalized his thoughts. “I've seen charms like this for sale in Long Marrakash, imported from Pengulfin Landing. Carved from the wood of the wellburr tree, because it's the hardest wood they have. Heavy.” He could not stop staring at the charm.
Someone was here before us,
he thought.
And if one, perhaps many. What's the chance of us coming across the only other person who has ever climbed the cliff?

“Those bodies we saw,” Lulah said. “On the way up. Maybe they didn't fall at all. Maybe they were thrown.”

Ramus looked up at her without really understanding what she was saying. His mind was on the Sleeping God, and if that meant the God knew how close he was and what he was thinking, so be it.
Fallen,
he thought, ignoring the throb of pain behind his eyes.
If you fell, how far up do you have to rise?
And now that he knew others had been here before him, it was not the fact that discovery no longer tasted so sweet that troubled him so much. It was the God, and only the God.

But Ramus's fascination was wearing down his caution. Always something more to discover, something more to explore . . . and he remembered the warning on the first page of his journal:
Never wake the fallen.

The agony punched at him then, a pain like he had never felt before, pulsing in his head and driving him to the ground. He passed out before he struck.

HIS WHOLE BEING
is restrained by something, hanging above a vast abyss, crushed beneath an uncompromising sky, harried all around by dangers he cannot see, feel or smell but which he senses with every nerve ending, every fiber of his dying body. He is no longer awake, yet he is aware of death more than he ever has been before.
Am I really seeing this from Nomi?
he thinks, and he tries to open his eyes. All he can see is a blur. It could be blinding light or crushing darkness, he cannot tell. He is not falling, but he knows that he is no longer in Noreela . . . and suddenly he feels a breeze on his skin and other things there, touching and probing. Still his vision is a blank, but he begins to smell, something animal and raw, and he can hear a clicking noise that sounds so much like communication.

He will never get used to living Nomi's nightmares. But whereas before they had given him some measure of sick satisfaction, now he is as terrified as she.

FOR A WHILE,
after seeing them kill Noon and throw Beko and Rhiana from the edge of the cliff, Nomi went away. It was easy to do. She was exhausted from the climb, both physically and mentally, and closing her eyes seemed to give that exhaustion free rein to work over her body and through her thoughts. Her muscles relaxed, burning but no longer cramping with resentment at what she had put them through. Her hands were cool, fingertips boiling points of pain at the ends of sore digits. The wound on her leg where the thing had dug in its fingers was agony. Her bladder relaxed and she pissed, but as the warmth turned to cold in the strengthening breeze, she did not care.

She tried to project herself out and down, away from the awful place they had climbed into and back to the Noreela she was only just staring to know. But attempting that was no escape, because way below were broken bodies, one of whom she had perhaps loved. So she went inward instead of without, and deep inside there were many matters to settle. She briefly met Timal, but that innocent, beautiful young man was no part of what her life had become. He did not have the eyes to face reality, and Nomi could find nothing to say to him. He faded and Ramus was there, holding his head and accusing Nomi with his glare.
I'm sorry,
she said, but even the horrible illness she had passed on to him seemed irrelevant.
The scheme of things,
she thought, and the Ramus she dreamed of lowered his hand, smiled and nodded, understanding that there was far too much between them to let momentary weaknesses drive them apart.

She thought of Beko, but it was the sight of his shattered body that answered. His memory would come back to her, she knew. If she survived this, which was doubtful, she would think of him again.

Nomi stayed away for as long as she could, but she did not know how long that was.

When they started prodding her stomach and between her legs, she came back.

“PISS ON YOU!”
she hissed. The thing stood back and looked at her. Then it crackled something low in its throat and turned away.

There were maybe a dozen of the tall creatures before her. They sat in pairs or alone, intermittent growls and clicks the only sign of their communication. They seemed confused and sometimes amazed, as though revelation after revelation were coming to them.

“Why don't you throw me too?” she shouted. “I'm tired of hanging around.” They'd tied her to a rough wooden frame, its four corners buried in the ground and various cross-posts supporting her feet, behind and shoulders. Her arms were stretched to either side and tied tightly, as were her legs. She could hardly move.
Hanging here waiting to die,
she thought, and she giggled again.

The cliff was maybe twenty steps behind her.

Nomi felt wretched and alone, and she could not hold down the terror. It was selfish, and painful, but fear of what was to come sickened her.

Another of the things stood and strode across to her, scratching at her chest through shirt and jacket. It came closer, sniffing, and she jerked her body, hoping to strike it in the face. But it was too fast, backing just beyond her reach.

Its hand darted forward and touched her stomach, and when she struggled again it turned around and stalked back to its resting place.

What are they doing?
Nomi had no idea why she was still alive while all the others were dead. The things had been vicious and merciless in their attack, and then their execution of Beko and Rhiana. Why keep her? Why tie her up here like this? When she looked around at the wooden frame she could see that it was not new. Grass grew long around the feet, and a variety of plants sprouted beneath her, where birds had roosted and shit out seeds.

Whatever the reason, it could not be good.

At that moment, as if from nowhere, a face leapt out at Nomi from the hallowed halls of the Guild of Voyagers. A memory that confused her for a beat because she did not know why it had manifested here, and now. But then she understood. The face was that of Sordon Perlenni, the First Voyager, who had disappeared over a hundred and thirty years before.

It was his face that graced the wooden statue.

Oh, by all the gods,
Nomi thought,
Sordon Perlenni, what did you do?

Another creature appeared, carrying a cloth bag slung from one elbow and a broken jug in the other hand. It came straight to Nomi and offered up the jug to her mouth. She looked into it suspiciously for a beat, smelled only water, and then decided that mattered little anyway. If they chose to poison her now, so be it. She drank, swallowing the water and almost groaning at the fresh taste.