Fallen (55 page)

IT QUICKLY GREW
dark. She sat on the edge of a step and slid down to the next one, moving fast, conscious of the Sentinels racing up the sides of the building outside.
I could just leave him to them,
she thought, surprised that the idea had not come sooner.
Could have gone down the other side of the building and hidden, let them come in after him, find him . . .

But there was more to this than whatever may or may not be hidden down here, more than exploration and discovery. There was Ramus and her.

As the huge circular staircase curved around to the left, the light from above faded away, leaving her in complete darkness. She felt her way to the edge of the next step and slipped out into the void, finding stone beneath her feet. She repeated the process again and again, and every time she slipped from the level surface she feared that it would be the last step, and the next drop would be a hundred times greater.

“Ramus!” she shouted. Her voice echoed away, above and below her, but nothing answered back.
He could be too far down,
she thought.
Or maybe he doesn't want to answer.

Perhaps he was dead.

If he had fallen from the last step, and she fell too, she could die when she hit his remains. They would rot down here together in an eternal embrace, never having said they were sorry.

“Ramus!” she called again. “Wait for me!”

There was no answer, so she carried on falling. After a while she realized she should have been counting the steps. There had been maybe a hundred steps up to the top of the building, and she had come down perhaps thirty. Seventy more like this until she reached ground level. Or less, if whatever this building contained was hidden away at its very heart. Or more, if it was simply the gateway to somewhere deeper and darker. An abyss, Sordon had said. It may have been a hundred steps up, but Nomi was suddenly terrified that it was a thousand back down.

She went on, and when she paused a few steps later she heard shuffling sounds from above her, and the crackling sounds of Sentinels communicating. They were descending, but they sounded cautious, no longer hooting in anger, and perhaps they were coming down here for the very first time. She knew so little about them. Sordon had told her some, venting his guilt at her whether she wanted to hear it or not, and now she wished she had asked him more. He had been up here for so long. . . .

“They're coming down, Ramus!” she shouted. “The fallen sleeper cannot wake, and they're here to make sure of that!” Her words echoed before her and she listened for a response. Again, nothing.

The stone became slimy. Water trickled somewhere in the darkness, and Nomi's hands slipped on the slick surface. Warmth wafted from below and she paused again, breath held as she tried to make out what had just happened. Her heart hammered against her chest, blood pulsed in her ears, she heard a drip as blood from her leg fell to the step below. Another gush of warm air, and this time she breathed it in to see what it contained.

“Breath of a God,” a voice said beside her.

Nomi screamed. A hand clasped across her mouth and pressed hard, and when she struck out, another hand grabbed her arm. She was pulled back onto the flat surface and pushed down, struggling, kicking at empty air.

“Nomi.” The voice spoke again, as quiet as before yet filling the darkness. “It's me.”

Nomi stopped struggling. The hand lifted from her mouth, though she could still sense it just above her face, ready to push down again should she scream.

“Ramus,” she whispered. “The Sentinels are coming.”

“Sentinels? That makes sense. I can hear them. Slow. They're scared. They know what's down here, and they're scared.”

“Do
you
know what's down here?” she asked.

For a beat the darkness did not answer. She sensed Ramus move away from her, and only then did he speak. “I'm a Voyager. I'm here to find out. We found somewhere, didn't we, Nomi? Didn't we find somewhere?”

We're not the first,
she wanted to say. There was so much to tell him, but here and now was not the place.

“You're pregnant,” he said.

“How . . . ?”

“You gave me the gift of your nightmares, remember?”

“I'm sorry,” she said, and two simple words spoken into endless darkness made her feel so much better.

Ramus snorted softly but did not reply.

“Ramus, we can't wake this thing. We know nothing about it. We don't know—”

“
I
know,” he said. “It's here with me, and it will guide me down. Do you see?”

“No, I don't understand.”

“I mean, do you
see,
Nomi?
I
see. I see you huddled there, staring into a darkness deeper than you've ever imagined, wondering whether the next step will drop you into an abyss. But the Sleeping God gives me sight, and I can see the way.”

“It's a Fallen God, Ramus.”

“And who judges what falls and what does not?”

Nomi did not understand the question and could offer no answer. “Are you going to kill me?” she asked.

Ramus laughed then, a soft sound that whispered away below them. She wondered what his laughter found down there, and whether it was ready.

“No,” he said. “You've said you're sorry. And I think, really, you gave me more than you could know.”

Nomi leaned forward, reaching for where she thought Ramus sat. She touched clothing and held on, pulling him closer, laying her hand on his face and trying not to let go. “Ramus, you don't know what's in your head.”

“I
do
know,” he said. “
It
is in my head, and it got there through the sickness it knows so well. Mind-worms, you told me, Nomi? I think you were lied to. I think you breathed something of a Sleeping God, back there in Ventgoria.”

“No . . .”

“Yes! Maybe the final breath of an old God dying. Maybe something more.”

“But if you wake the Fallen God . . . have you thought about that? Have you really thought about what it might do?”

“No,” he said. He laughed again. “If you could only see your face. No, Nomi, I haven't thought about it. I don't need to. I don't care. This is what I was born for. This is the greatest voyage ever.”

“It's
doing
this to you! This isn't you, Ramus, this is—”

“Did you untie your charm?”

Nomi blinked, surprised at the question. She remembered the rope charm sinking quickly into the pool, and her fear that had sent it there. “No,” she said.

Ramus was quiet for a beat. “Then you'll never know what
I
gave
you,
” he said. And he slipped away.

Nomi shouted after him at first, then followed, almost losing control and sending herself tumbling several times. But fast though she moved, Ramus moved faster.

“It'll lie to you!” she called.

But Ramus was gone. And even if he did hear her pleas, he chose not to answer.

Nomi continued down, feeling more alone in this absolute darkness than she had ever thought possible.

THE SLEEPING GOD
called him down and showed him the way. It was still there inside him, giving and taking dreams and nightmares from the cancer eating his brain. It sat beside the cancer—memory of another Sleeping God? Perhaps, perhaps not—and called it weak. Maybe it could remove it entirely, but this was not what drove Ramus. It had been a passing thought, but he considered it no more. He was used to the idea of dying, but now the God gave him the chance to achieve something before he went away.
Have you really thought about what it might do?
Nomi had asked. He had, and it did not matter. The Sleeping Gods were myth and legend, just like all the other gods worshipped in Noreela and perhaps beyond. Myth and legend.

As a Voyager, it had always been his one aim in life to find the truth. This greatest truth would make him the greatest Voyager.

He could see every step, every sigil carved into the wall of the giant staircase, every thin stalactite hanging from the ceiling. He could see them because the God gave him sight beyond light. And it called him down.

Nomi shouted after him for a while, and then she started descending again. It would take her a long time. Ramus saw the way and he slipped down, down, not needing to count the steps because the God would let him know when he was nearing the bottom.

He came to a step whose edge had cracked and fallen away. He had to move in close to the central column to bypass the break, easing himself carefully down to the step below, only a foot's width of stone beneath his feet this close to the center.

Nomi could fall here, he knew, and for an instant there was a flicker of something within him. Concern? Grief, already? Then the God whispered words he could not hear or understand, but their tone drew Ramus on.

Nomi had called those things Sentinels. Perhaps they had been, once, but that must have been in some distant past. The ruined village spoke of their fall, and the remains of unknown technologies were testament to where they had once been, and where they were now. But there were two questions that rang in his mind. Had the Sleeping God brought them here to defend itself? Or had someone or something else placed them here, to guard the Sleeping God?

Perhaps even hours ago, Ramus would have found the answer to that question of utmost importance. But now the God smiled at his querying mind, lulled him with whispered appeasements, and he felt its breath on his skin once more.

The breath of a Sleeping God
, he thought, and the pungent clammy breeze became sweet and comforting.

After a while, he came to the bottom of the large spiral staircase. He waited on the final step and listened, and from far above came the faint sounds of someone else descending. He could not make out whether it was one person or many. Perhaps Nomi was still ahead of the Sentinels, perhaps not.

The staircase opened out into a huge cavern. There was true light down here, emanating from great swathes of moss growing across the floor, up walls and onto the ceiling of the cave. In a far corner, a thousand specks of light danced in the air, describing complex patterns that repeated again and again. Flies, perhaps, or something else entirely. Here and there, the floor was taken with shallow pools of water, reflecting the wondrous stalactites that hung down from the ceiling and creating landscapes of fantastic cities that never were, but may one day be.

The cave was utterly silent but for Ramus's labored breathing. He held his breath for a moment to take in the unspoiled wonder of this place.

Across the cave, in the shadows where floor and walls met in a drift of fallen rock, a darker shadow indicated the beginning of a tunnel. From that tunnel, illuminated from below by a splash of moss, came a faint waft of steam.

Where are you?
Ramus thought.

The ground beneath his feet thumped, a gentle but definite movement, and the steam swirled as though disturbed from within.

Ramus walked across the cave. The flitting spots of light suddenly darted across the cave toward him and he hurried on, but they could move much faster. They gathered around him, never near enough for his waving arms to knock them aside, but this close that he could hear the hum of tiny wings. As he walked, so they moved, and he crossed the cave contained within a sphere of light. He could make out a curious synchronicity to their movements; some flitted this way, some the other way—whole groups of light-flies seemed to be describing the same patterns in the air again and again. The movement resulted in regular, angled light drawings all around him, morphing every few beats into something equally complex and wonderful. It was almost as if they acted with one mind.

Ramus reached the far edge of the cave and stood before the tunnel entrance. The air was warmer and damper here, and a wisp of steam caressed his face like the touch of a forgotten lover. Within, the presence in his mind smiled.

He entered the tunnel. The light-flies spread out a little, creating a larger, weaker area of illumination, which moved with him. The tunnel was almost perfectly circular, the walls smooth except in a few places where the stone had crumbled. In these places, fleshy, gnarled plants peered through, like the impossibly deep roots of trees long since vanished from the surface.

Ramus wondered what he would find growing were he to excavate and pursue the course of these roots. The light gave the effect of the tunnel moving past him, rather than him moving through the tunnel. The walls flowed by, the floor whispered past his feet and he was being carried closer.

The shape in his mind grew slightly and made itself known once more, swallowing down the discomfort of his illness and sheltering him from the pain.
Yes, now I
am
sure,
he thought.

The tunnel curved to the left and dipped down. He passed through places where moisture hung heavy in the air, and steam drifted in veils that seemed too dense to float. He felt these veils break around him, his senses expanded beyond the realities and potentials of his own life and another thump transferred through the ground and into his feet.

He knew that he was below and far away from the building now, though he could not tell which direction he was taking. If the tunnel took him far enough north, it would end at the Great Divide. He thought that unlikely. This was a place very definitely of this new world, and even looking out across the cloud cover before the Divide would make it part of Noreela.