Fallen (9 page)

Nomi laughed.

Not long after setting out they entered Clyst Forest. It would take them until midday to ride through, and then the rest of their route out of Marrakash would be across the vast Clyst Plain: a hundred miles of grassland and moorland rolling through valleys and over gentle hills. It was an easy ride, and the dangers were few. There were a dozen small settlements between here and the border with Pavissia Steppes, and they would have tracks to follow and farmsteads at which to stop and buy food. Marrakash always offered a gentle start to a voyage, and Nomi was glad of the gradual change.

The shadows closed around them, the trees grew high and there was a pleasant chill to the air. Ferns grew between the trees, taller than a person in places, and they swayed in time with tune birds singing in harmony. Every song was different, and some claimed that the birds felt the same emotion a person would whilst listening. The song this morning was upbeat and bright.

There was a path through the woods—a much-traveled route worn down to the rock in places. Before long, they passed a group of people going the other way, the men carrying heavy baskets on their heads, while the women bore tools and water skins.

“Nolan berries?” Beko asked.

The lead man carefully lowered his basket to the ground, nodding. He was sweating and breathing hard, but he offered a smile.

“Can I buy some?” Beko patted his stomach. “I've had breakfast, but Nolans lose their freshness so quickly.”

“Help yourself,” the man said. “Good crop this year, and I'll not take money for something you can pick a few hundreds steps on.” He lifted the basket back onto his head and leaned against Beko's horse.

Beko chose a dozen fat berries, handing a few to Nomi. “Good journeys.”

“Same to you.” The man and his party headed off.

Nomi ate a berry. She closed her eyes, luxuriating in the taste. It was sweet, juicy and rich, and she could hardly think of anything more perfect.

Beko ate a couple of berries then turned his horse, passing the rest to Rhiana behind them. “Pass them along,” he said.

“Should have taken a few more; they make a great filling for plain doves.” Rhiana grinned at Nomi as she chewed, a dribble of juice speckling her chin.

“Hey, Ramus!” Nomi called. Ramus was at the back of the group, looking around calmly as they ate and chatted amongst themselves. “Come up and join us?”

He shook his head, smiled but said nothing.

“Please yourself. But I'll get there first!”

They moved deeper into the forest.

_____

NOMI HAD NOT
traveled this way in over a year, and when they came to the standing stones, she gasped in surprise.

The stones had always been there. There were nineteen of them; fifteen were arranged around the clearing in a rough circle, while four others stood beyond the circle at the four points of the compass. The glade was almost a hundred steps across, and at its center lay a wide, flat rock with weathered carvings in its surface. Time had made most of the images impossible to discern, and the remaining indents were home to lichen. The stones were huge—the largest twice as high as a man and just as wide—and no one knew where they had come from, who had placed them or how they had been maneuvered through the forest. Their purpose was similarly vague. Temple, sacrificial altar, burial place of a Sleeping God—all had been suggested. There had been digs over the years, but few people were really interested enough to spend much time here. Noreela, both known and unknown, was scattered with thousands of similarly intriguing sites.

This place had always appeared wild, primal and untouched; even the stone circle had seemed a part of the land, not the result of people upon it. But now all that had changed. The trees around the edge of the clearing were adorned with countless scraps of colored cloth, some of them tied to lower branches or fixed to trunks, others hanging so high above the ground that whoever placed them there must have risked life and limb to do so. Blue, red and purple were the main colors, but amongst hundreds of these Nomi could also make out a few yellows, some greens and one or two black strips.

“What's this?” she asked, perplexed and a little awed.

“Remembrance trees,” Beko said.

The colors felt right here, not intrusive, and as a breeze rustled leaves and strips of cloth alike, they felt like a true part of the forest.

“I've seen remembrance trees before,” she said. “But why here, so suddenly?”

Beko shrugged.

“The sightings,” Konrad said. “There are rumors of wraiths being seen here, starting last winter.”

“I've not heard of that,” Nomi said.

“Then you don't drink in the right taverns. I've heard the tale from a few people—Serians, traders, a mercenary—and it's much the same whoever does the telling: the ghosts of children run here when the death moon's full. They say they were sacrificed to the moon a long time ago. Though the mercenary told me that the children are only recently dead. Still suffering their sacrifice, he said.” Konrad grinned. “But then, he
was
very drunk.”

Nomi shivered. “So why do people suddenly see this as a place of remembrance if it's so haunted?”

“Maybe because it's close to beyond,” Ramus said. He had ridden up quietly on his horse, and now sat an arm's stretch from Nomi. She wanted to touch him, but she was not sure how he would react.

“I don't like it,” she said. “I did, but now I don't.” The strips decorating the stone circle clearing suddenly made her uneasy, and all she wanted to do was move on.

“Different colors from different faiths,” Ramus said. “Death moon, life moon, the land. Sleeping Gods.”

“Which color for them?” Nomi asked.

“I think probably the black ones.”

“Shall we move on?” Beko asked. “It will be good to get through the forest in time for lunch.”

They skirted around the clearing. It did not feel right to break the circle.

NOMI FOUND HERSELF
riding alone. Beko went on ahead with Lulah, the short woman dwarfed by her huge horse, and Nomi heard them talking in subdued tones. Behind her rode the other Serians, mostly in silence but sometimes responding to comments or jokes from Ramin. She was already warming to most of them—though Lulah seemed cold and distant—and she hoped Ramus would become more friendly. They would be spending a long time together as a group, and she would far prefer that it was on good terms.

Ramus still brought up the rear. Nomi glanced back now and then, and noticed that Ramus's movement on his horse was awkward. He still had to find his rhythm. He'd be sore after today's ride. Nomi's thighs and rump were already warm from the unaccustomed exercise, but her movements had quickly fallen in tune with her horse, and she sensed that the animal was at ease with her.
Almost fifteen hundred miles,
she thought. It was seven hundred miles there, assuming they did not have to divert for anything. Coming back, the same; and who knew what they may be carrying on their return journey? She clicked her tongue and the horse's ears twitched.

“So, I hear women make better Voyagers than men,” Rhiana said. She had ridden up beside Nomi and now kept pace, moving with grace and poise. Even the cruel angles and curves of her weapons did not seem out of place.

“Of course,” Nomi said. “We don't have anything to prove.” She smiled, but Rhiana's answering grin did not seem all humor.

“Piss!” the Serian said. “Everyone's got something to prove. But is it true? This is my third voyage, and the first two were with men.”

“How did they go?”

“First one was with a turd called Blaken.”

“I know him,” Nomi said, nodding slowly.
A turd indeed.

“We went south across the Pavissia Steppes, heading for the unnamed lake at its southern edge. He wanted to camp on the shore and catalog its flora and fauna. But he hadn't researched the route, or even planned how long the voyage would take. We ran into a band of Steppe marauders, disturbed them attacking a farming village, and we lost three people.”

“Serians?”

“Two of my friends, and a woman from Long Marrakash, one of Blaken's soft friends. When we returned, it came out that the marauders were known to be working in that area. Reports had filtered back from an earlier voyage, but Blaken had paid them no heed.”

“What happened?”

Rhiana touched her leather tunic, finger circling a patch of bare leather. “Had a place just here for Blaken's stud. But Beko talked me out of it.”

“You're not the first Serian I've heard of who wanted Blaken's head. But good for Beko.”

The soldier offered a wry smile. “I suppose so. Killing a Voyager wouldn't have put me in good favor with the Guild.”

“It would have got you executed, most likely.”

“Well. So, that was the first. The second was little better. I can't even remember his name, but he was nothing to speak of. Sailed us out to The Spine, dug up some plants, shot a few birds, sailed us back.”

“And now you're on a voyage with a man
and
a woman Voyager.”

“I am.” Rhiana glanced back over her shoulder, then leaned across toward Nomi. Even then she rode with elegance, her long, tied hair swinging down across her shoulder. “He's a bit quiet,” she said.

“He does a lot of thinking.”

“And you?”

“What about me?”

“What's your drive?”

“To make women the best Voyagers, naturally.”

Rhiana stared at her for just too long. Then she grinned. “I'll help,” she said. She rode on ahead and joined Beko and Lulah, and Nomi wondered exactly what she meant.

WHEN THEY PASSED
the ruin, Nomi knew that they were almost out of Clyst Forest. The remains had stood here for as long as anyone could remember, and it was said that this had once been a temple to the Violet Dogs, a race of monstrous invaders that had swarmed the Western Shores before history began. There was very little left now: a few scattered piles of carved building blocks, a heavy lintel half buried in the soil and one portion of a wall still standing. It was home to creeping vegetation and a colony of rock ants, weaving their sticky tube tunnels through grooves and cracks in the old stone.

Nomi had never paused to examine the ruin because it had never been her destination. She spared it a quick glance and noticed that it had been subsumed more by the forest since her last trip. The climbing plants' stems were slightly thicker, the lintel buried marginally deeper in the ground. A few more years and maybe this would become totally hidden, just another secret part of Clyst Forest that would fade from sight and memory until no one knew it was there.

She often wondered how many other such places had already disappeared.

She noticed Beko had paused ahead, Lulah and Rhiana just behind him. He turned around and caught her eye, and Nomi rode forward.

“Traders camped ahead,” he said.

The path through the forest was much wider here, the trees farther apart. She could see movement between the trunks, and she caught the whiff of cooking meat and spices. “Lunch,” she said.

“They're charm traders,” Beko said.

Rhiana spat. “So long as they don't try charming me.”

Beko laughed, and Nomi felt momentarily excluded.

They moved on, rounding a slow bend and passing between the first group of the traders.

A woman stood quickly from the woven mat she had been sitting on, holding out an array of fur tails. “Ward away the dark,” she said, her voice tinged with the accent of the Pavissia Steppes. “Wood cat tails to ward away the dark.”

“I just light a fire,” Noon said, laughing.

A young boy skipped along the track, trailing a length of string behind him, dried leaves from poison cacti waving in the breeze. “Cure the ills in your head,” he said, laughing manically. “Ill head! Ill head!” the boy shouted, darting dangerously close to Konrad's horse.

“Away!” Konrad said. He kicked out, but the boy twisted aside easily.

More traders tried to parade their wares, dancing and singing, pleading and whispering, some of them saying nothing at all as they offered their products to view. There were petrified pieces of dead animals; plants; objects carved from wood or stone; fine clay pitchers of dark fluids; one woman offered herself, pulling open her loose tunic to display heavy breasts and a stomach tattooed with swirling images.

They did not stop. Beko rode on and Nomi did not question his decision; there was a sense this could get ugly. When they had passed the traders Nomi turned around in her saddle to see how Ramus had reacted.

His horse stood abandoned, and Ramus was kneeling beside an old woman and her display of rope charms.

“What in the name of all the gods . . . ?” Nomi paused and let the Serians ride by, only Ramin offering her a tight smile.

“Your friend in need of some help from beyond?” he asked.

“Not Ramus, no.” She shook her head.
At least,
she thought,
not the old Ramus.
But this was no longer the Ramus of old, was it? This was a new man, with a terrible new illness which he probably still believed nobody else knew about. . . .