by Tim Lebbon
Ten smiled, a hint of mockery behind the leathery mask of his face.
“Let's eat!” Nomi said. “I'm starving. I hear they caught a cloud of river plumes last night. Shall we?”
Nomi went first and, after an awkward moment, Ten followed. Ramus came last, using the time it took them to reach Naru May's to examine the man.
He really was a wanderer. Ramus had been doubtful last night, but the man's true nature was obvious. The mix of clothes, the skin leathered by the sun and elements, the neutral accent—although Ramus thought he'd detected a twang of the Pavissia Steppes somewhere in there. Ten also exuded the vague superiority projected by every wanderer when they visited a settlement, especially one as large as Long Marrakash. The feeling was often well earned; the average wanderer had seen more than most Noreelans.
It was also rare that they lived into old age. The dangers of Noreela would take them—the harsh elements; clashes with other wanderers, nomadic tribes or marauders or falling prey to some of Noreela's deadlier wildlife. This man looked ten years Ramus's senior, which Ramus could respect. He carried a longbow over his left shoulder, a quiver of arrows across his back and a short, wide sword in a scabbard strapped to his leg. Ramus could hear the clinks of other weapons secreted beneath his cloak.
They took a table close to the edge of the deck and a server hurried across, ignoring the outstretched hands of several other patrons.
“Savi,” Nomi said, “it's a good morning, and we have a guest. I want a bowl of sautéed river plumes, a selection of bread, a bottle of cydrax . . .” She looked at Ramus, eyebrows raised.
“Sheebok testicles?” Ramus asked. The girl nodded, then looked at Ten.
The tall man said nothing.
“And a bowl of plumes for my guest,” Nomi said. “And Savi? The good plumes. Make sure they haven't dried out.”
“Of course, Mam Hyden.” The girl hurried away to the covered kitchen at the corner of the deck.
“You might as well own this place,” Ramus said.
Nomi shrugged. “Ten, this is the man I was telling you about.”
“The Voyager?” Ten looked at Ramus, appraising him for the first time. “Where have you been?”
For a heartbeat Ramus was ready to curse him. But he sensed Nomi's tension, her simmering excitement, and he was intrigued. Piss, he was more than intrigued, he was interested.
“My main interest is the unnamed mountains, bordering Ventgoria and—”
“I know where they are,” Ten said. “Where else?”
“Pengulfin Woods,” Ramus said. “The Cantrassan coast. Some of the islands of The Spine.”
Ten nodded thoughtfully. “I've been to the Divide.”
The table fell silent. Ramus held his breath, waiting for Ten's expression to break into a mocking smile, but it did not. His eyes were cool, his mouth downturned.
Nomi's eyes glittered.
“No one has been there and returned,” Ramus said.
Ten snorted and rolled his eyes. “You believe that?”
“Of course. I know that. I'm a Voyager, of the Guild of Voyagers. I know three Voyagers who went south for the Great Divide over the space of ten years. No one has seen them again.”
“Haven't they?”
“Stop answering me with pissing questions!”
“Why?” Ten smiled, and Ramus realized he was playing the wanderer's game.
“What's it like there?” Nomi asked.
The wanderer looked past Ramus at the kitchen, lifting his head and sniffing the scent of food on the air. “That's part of my story,” he said.
“Is that where you found what you showed me last night?” Nomi asked.
“What did he show you?” Ramus was becoming frustrated that the stranger seemed to have taken control of the conversation. He likely spent nine-tenths of his life on his own, yet in company he had quickly and easily gained the advantage.
Nomi looked across the table at Ramus, jaw clenching as if ready to speak. But then she shook her head. “It's for him to show and tell,” she said. “But Ramus, you know I wouldn't have come to you with something trivial.”
“Not friends?” Ten asked, glancing from one to the other.
“We're Voyagers,” Ramus said.
“Ah. And voyaging doesn't allow friendships.” Ten took a spiced nut from the bowl on the table and chewed slowly.
That's right, Ramus thought. He knows us well. He glanced at Nomi and she looked quickly away.
Savi came with a bottle of cydrax and three mugs, and three plates balanced on her right hand and arm. She placed them on the table with a flourish. “Anything else, Mam Nomi?”
Nomi indicated the two empty tables next to them. “Some privacy would be good. Keep those tables free, if you will.”
Savi nodded, glanced at Ten and walked away quickly.
“Sweet,” Ten said.
“She's thirteen.”
The tall man shrugged.
“Why are you called Ten?” Ramus asked.
“I was my mother's tenth child.”
Ramus nodded thoughtfully and pushed the roasted testicles around his plate. The sauce looked perfect, the meat tender and delicious. “It's an unlucky number for some.”
“It was for my mother. She died having me.”
“I'm sorry.”
Ten chewed a huge spoonful of river plumes and sighed with delight. “I never knew her,” he said through a full mouth. “But she had a good life for a wanderer, and long, and I'm told she loved her children well.”
Ramus looked across at Nomi. She was spooning her food around the plate, frowning, tense and expectant. He could see the excitement there that had been so apparent last night, but this morning it was tempered by something else. Caution, perhaps? Or concern that this wanderer could take them for fools?
“Many people have seen the Great Divide,” Ten continued, his voice dropping slightly. He finished his mouthful and put his spoon down. “Truly, I have seen it. But few who see it choose to talk about it. It's . . . frightful.”
“Huge?”
“Massive. Immense. But not only that. It bears its own awful gravity, which tears the wonder from you and replaces it with fear. It's the end of the world. At least, that's what legend says. But . . . there's more. Truly.” Ten frowned and shook his head, as if to loosen a memory. He poured a generous mug of cydrax, hesitated, then poured for Nomi and Ramus as well.
“Surely some who have seen it could talk about it? You are.”
“I have better reason than most.”
“And that is . . . ?”
“The parchments,” Nomi said. “You found them there.”
Ten nodded and took a deep swig of cydrax. He belched lightly and drank some more.
“Parchments?” Ramus asked. He hated being led along, but there was something behind this story and Ten's telling of it that rang true. Maybe it was Nomi's fascination and excitement. Or more likely, it was Ten's obvious discomfort.
“You read?” the wanderer asked.
“Of course. I'm a Voyager, and the mind is the greatest place to explore. The minds of others too, when they choose to record what they think and know.”
Ten looked across at Nomi. She nodded. “That's why I told him. Perhaps he can read the parchments.”
“Then they're worth something?” the wanderer asked.
And it all comes down to this, Ramus thought. Money. Well, I'm glad Nomi is here.
“Let me see them,” Ramus said, “and—”
“You'll hear my tale first,” Ten said.
Ramus finished his food and leaned back in his chair. The world went on around them. People ate and chatted, boats and sloops drifted along and across the river, traders traded and fishermen fished. But he suddenly felt more removed than usual.
He always felt like a visitor to Long Marrakash. He was driven to travel and explore—scratchy feet, his mother had called it—and whenever he lived in the city, even for two or three years at a time, it always felt tempor
ary. Just somewhere to rest and plan his next voyage.
Nomi waved Savi over and ordered two more bottles of cydrax, and the three of them fell silent. Then Ten started talking, and Ramus experienced an instant of intense emotion: excitement, exhilaration and the taste of a fresh voyage ahead.
“I’VE SPENT A long time walking back and forth before the Divide,” Ten began. “It draws you. I know I said earlier that it's . . . terrifying, but there's an attraction as well. It pulls you in and holds you close, and sometimes it just won't let go.
“The first time I saw it, I was about twenty. I had a run-in with a band of marauders on the Pavissia Steppes, and I went south to get away from them. I knew what was supposed to be there, but I was young and feisty, and I'd just killed my first man.”
He trailed off, pouring more cydrax and looking at Nomi and Ramus. Trying to see if we're shocked, Ramus thought. Nomi is, I can see that. But I hope she won't give him the satisfaction.
“Anyway,” Ten said, and drank some more. “The feistiness didn't last. I got away from the marauders and kept going south. After a long time I found the Divide . . . or maybe it found me. It's a cliff that reaches into the sky.” He looked up into the clear blue above them, shaking his head. “Here the sky has no scale. It's blue and beautiful, but there's no real sense of it. There, the Divide touches it, and seems to devour it. The cliff rises higher than the clouds, which seem to shroud its top permanently—if it even has one. It goes east and west as far as you can see, and disappears around the belly of the land. First time I saw it, I spent a whole moon camped a few miles from its base, thinking I would never get away. There was plenty of food; berry bushes, root crops, wild sheebok grazing along the foothills. I ate well. There were flying things that buzzed me, but they never came close again after I shot one down with my crossbow. In the evenings, I'd sit and listen to the tumblers rolling across the plains.” He took another drink.
Tumblers! Ramus thought. I always thought they were legend! But still he reserved judgment. Ten was a good storyteller, yet perhaps that was all he was. Time, as Ramus's mother had said, would tell.
“That was when I first started thinking for myself. Until then, I'd never truly been a wanderer. I walked, yes. I traveled from here to there, but I spent most of my time simply surviving. There in the shadow of the Divide, I came alive. I spent the nights sitting by my fire and thinking on what the Divide could mean. What was at its top, if it had one? What was behind it?”
“There's nothing behind it,” Nomi scoffed.
“Then why is it called the Divide?” Ramus asked.
Ten smiled. “So I sat there night after night, a good meal in my belly and the cool night air alive in my senses. I'd been drinking only water for a couple of moons, and I felt so much closer to the land. Almost as if I could plunge my hand into its loam and touch its magic.”
“Pah!” Nomi snorted. “You're no magichalan.” She regarded such people with derision, Ramus knew, though he could never understand why. She was a Voyager and had seen many strange things in the marshes of Ventgoria. Why not believe in magic?
“No, I'm not. But the Divide makes you appreciate the potential in things. And this whole world is thrumming with potential.”
Nomi chuckled and took a sip of her cydrax.
“How long did you stay there?” Ramus asked.
“Three moons, camped in its shadow. At dawn I'd see a moment of sun, and then only dusk. After a while, I started thinking about finding where it ended.”
“I've always heard that there is no end,” Ramus said. “That it goes on, out beyond Noreela's shores.”
“Maybe,” Ten said. “But the closer I came to the eastern shore, the more treacherous the landscape became. Plain turned to marsh, and then bog. The bogs were venting poisonous gases, and there were creatures in there . . . huge. I never saw them, but I heard them, and I felt the ground shiver as they rose and rolled. So I worked northward, leaving the Divide's shadow at last. And by the time I reached the shore, I could no longer see the Divide. The bogs steamed, the clouds closed in and wherever that cliff struck the coast was out of view.
“I would have stayed there, but the bog gas would have killed me eventually. And if not the gas, those things that lived there.” He opened the third bottle of cydrax. The alcohol seemed to be having little effect. “I could hear them rising from the bog and dragging themselves toward me. Perhaps they were close. Or perhaps they were a long way off, and larger than I imagined. I didn't stay to find out.”
“Voyagers have tried sailing past the Divide,” Nomi said.
“Piss,” Ramus said. “They've set out with that intention, but no one knows if they succeeded, because they've not been seen again.”
Ten nodded, a satisfied smile on his face.
“Maybe they're still sailing,” Ramus speculated.
“Or maybe,” the wanderer said, “they're in the stomachs of the bog beasts, or at the bottom of the sea, or washed up rotting against the shore. Noreela is a hungry land.”
“You have a way of making it such an attractive place,” Ramus said, but his interest was piqued. “Go on. What happened next?”
“I went west,” Ten said. “I traveled again in the shadow of the Divide, heading for the Western Shores. I hoped that there I would find what the east had hidden, but I was wrong.”
“What was there?” Nomi asked.
“A jungle. I started in, but the trees soon grew so close together that I could barely pass by. And there were creatures there too. Spiders as big as my hand; snakes as thick as my thigh; ants; worms with teeth; flies that sucked my blood and left poison in its place. And other things, not animals. Not human. A bad place. I only touched its outer extremes, but I knew it went on for days.”
“So you went north?” Ramus asked. “Tried to skirt the forest but keep the Divide in view? Only the forest grew north as well, and by the time you reached the Western Shores, the Divide was too far away to see?”
Ten stared at him for some time, so long that Ramus looked away, unnerved.
“You don't believe me,” Ten said.
“I've met a lot of wanderers in my time, and they're known to . . . elaborate.”
“Ramus,” Nomi said, her voice bearing a warning.
“I'm telling the truth,” Ten said. “If any Voyager had made it back from that place, they'd tell you the same.”
“But you have more to tell,” Ramus said.
Ten glanced at Nomi, reached into his cloak and then decided against it. “I'll tell you first,” he said. “Then I'll show you.”
Ramus sat back and crossed his hands on his stomach.
“I walked back along the Divide. Camped here and there, ate well, listened to the tumblers in the north. It took me two moons to gather the courage to do what I knew I must.”
“You climbed,” Nomi said.
Ten nodded slowly. “Up into the foothills first. And then, where the hills ended and the cliffs began, I started up.” He leaned forward, elbows resting on the table, long hair hanging down on either side of his face. “I never got very high, but I found signs that others had climbed before me.”
“What signs?” Ramus asked, but he could already guess.
“Bodies. Or what was left of them. Skeletons mostly, but some were . . . fresher. Looked as if they'd been chewed. And all badly broken, as if they had climbed higher, then fallen.”
“Fallen,” Ramus whispered. “How many?”
Ten shrugged. “Six? Eight? I climbed eight times at various points along the Divide. I made it three hundred steps high, maybe four hundred, and then . . .”
“No more routes,” Ramus said. “Like the cliffs were never meant to be climbed.”
Ten shook his head. “Not that, no. I could have gone farther on at least two occasions. But every time I found a body, I lost my nerve.”
“So you never got as high as the clouds?”
“Nowhere near.”
“And no one else did, either?”
&
nbsp; “I can't know that. If they did, and did not fall, then . . .”
“Maybe they're still climbing?”
“Or maybe they reached the top.”
“It's believed there is no top,” Nomi said.
“Of course,” Ramus said. “If there was a top to the Great Divide, there would be something south of the cliff face. For most Noreelans, that's unthinkable. It's been a problem for thinkers for centuries. There are books full of it.”
“You've seen these books?” Ten asked.
“A couple. There's one in the Marrakash Library, not a mile from here. And I know people who keep books to themselves.”
“I could write one,” Ten said. “And I could give it an ending.”
Ramus laughed again. “You tell a good story, wanderer, but you need more than words and hearsay to—”
Ten reached into his cloak again, and this time his eyes were full of purpose. Nomi sat up straighter. She looked at Ramus, her eyes sparkling with something he had only ever rarely seen on her face: the thrill of discovery.
Ten brought out a rolled parchment, tied with a knot of leather.
“What's this?” Ramus asked.
The knot whispered as it came apart. “I found these close to one of the bodies.”
“What are they?”
The wanderer flattened the parchment pages—three of them—across the table, his hands still obscuring the uppermost page. “The body was broken,” he said. “Every bone shattered, as though he or she had fallen from a great height.” He glanced around, sat back and revealed the pages. “Perhaps all the way from the top.”
Ramus leaned forward and turned his head, and for a heartbeat the images did not register.
And then he saw.
“Well?” Nomi whispered.
Ramus touched the top page and traced the first of the images. “By every fucking god that ever touched Noreela!” he said.
“Not every god,” Ten said. “Just this one.”
RAMUS SENT TEN away. Nomi objected, but Ramus gave her one of his harsh stares.
“Don't go elsewhere,” Nomi said. “We're the Voyagers you need to deal with on this. I have the ear of Marquella, and he has the support of the Guild. If we feel that this is worth pursuing, I can ensure that you're paid everything you're due.”
