by Tim Lebbon
Nobody knew just how long ago the Sleeping Gods had supposedly gone down.
She looked at Beko where he stood at the mouth of the ravine. Ramus called him my captain, she thought. Perhaps I'd like that to be so.
There was a sudden movement at the ruin and Ramus emerged, carrying his blank book by one open cover like an injured bird. He looked around, lost and frantic, until he set eyes on her.
“You were quick,” she said, but she could see that something had happened.
Ramus stared at her for a heartbeat too long before smiling and shaking his head. He looked down and closed the book slowly, deliberately, taking too long. Composing himself, Nomi thought.
“Not much new here,” he said.
“Except?” Nomi hurried to him, ignoring the flutter of activity from the Serians listening to their exchange.
“Except nothing,” he said.
“Ramus?”
He shook his head. “Just a funny turn.”
“You feel unwell?”
“No. Maybe it's the heat, or . . .”
“This place.” She smiled and touched his arm. “You always get so involved.”
“Yes,” he said. “Involved.” He walked away, holding the book to his chest as though he had something to hide.
“Ramus!” Nomi called. His illness? she thought. Or something else? I really need to know. Not for him or for the voyage, but for me.
He paused and looked over his shoulder.
“If you're unwell, we can turn around,” she said.
“I'm not unwell, Nomi.” He looked at the temple he seemed so keen to leave behind. “Some places have echoes, that's all.”
Nomi listened, and watched, and when he walked away, she saw Beko staring at her. She turned her back on all of them and looked at the ruins of the temple to the Sleeping Gods. A strange place, so old and well constructed for its time that much of it still stood. And she thought, He's lying.
“Let's get back to the horses,” Beko said. “I have a campsite in mind for the night, but it's a good twenty miles on.”
“I'll ask him,” Nomi whispered. A bird took flight from one of the nests in the cliff wall, as though it had been listening for these words. She watched it fly, wondering how many other secret mutterings it had shared.
WHEN HE REACHED his horse, Ramus risked one more look at the book. Past the page he had titled back in Long Marrakash, the first blank page was now marked by the dropped charcoal.
When he had bent to pick up both book and charcoal, he had made another mark. An accident. A fumble, a slip of the hand.
But when he had grasped the book by its cover, and when it had swung down to hang at an angle from his hand, those random marks had manifested into images he could understand. It was Old Noreelan, with the pictorial quality so common in tomes about the Sleeping Gods.
He looked at it one more time, and even in the heat he could not withhold a shiver.
It said, Never wake the fallen.
Chapter 7
THEY RODE HARD that afternoon, through the heat of the sun and the dust thrown up from the dried ground, and by the time Beko called a halt they were all ready to stop. He rode on ahead with Rhiana and Konrad, the three of them spread out across the trail. Nomi knew that they were making sure the campsite he had in mind was safe. They were much closer to the border with the Pavissia Steppes now, and it was not unheard of for marauder parties to make sorties into Marrakash.
She dismounted and watched Ramus do the same.
He had said very little that afternoon. She'd ridden beside him much of the time, but the moment had never seemed right to ask what had bothered him at the temple. He had returned the book to his backpack and hung it on his saddle, and his expression had looked uncomfortable rather than disturbed. Whether that was because he knew she was watching, Nomi did not know.
“I'm sore and aching and I'd kill for a bath,” she said.
Ramin laughed. “I wondered where the smell came from! And there I was, blaming my sweet horse.” He leaned forward and clucked and whispered into his beast's ear.
“Watch who you abuse, Ramin. I've decided that I'm cooking tonight.”
The Serian gave her an easy smile and touched his chest, lowering his head in a casual apology.
Nomi laughed. She felt fine. These Serians were good, and that gave her more comfort than she could have hoped for.
But Ramus . . .
She walked to him, tapped him on the shoulder and refused to drop her gaze when he turned around.
“Leave a weary old man alone,” he said at last.
“You're only ten years older than me.”
Ramus shrugged. “I feel older. Probably all the hard living I've chosen, and the good living you've endured.”
“What's wrong?” she asked, lowering her voice. She did not want the Serians to think there was a problem. Beko she could talk to if necessary, but Ramin, Lulah and Noon were still unknown to her. They made her feel safe, but the farther they went from Long Marrakash, the harder trust was won.
Ramus glanced over her shoulder, obviously thinking the same thing. “Just a bad feeling at the temple,” he said. He patted the backpack still hanging on his saddle.
“Ramus, in every story I've heard, they're benevolent Gods.”
“Of course they are. Benevolent Sleeping Gods. Who are we to wake them?”
“If it's even there. And who's to say we'll wake it?”
He came in close, his nose almost touching hers. Nomi was aware of Lulah looking their way, but she would not pull back. She could smell Ramus's breath, feel the heat radiating from his face.
“You really think that if we go there and find a Sleeping God, things will stop with that?”
“I don't know,” Nomi said. “But we came on this voyage together. And nothing happens that we don't both agree on first.”
He pulled away, and uttered a noise that may have been a laugh. “You've always believed you're so central to your life,” he said. “But no one is. We're all small players in a much larger game.” He touched the backpack again. “This is already way beyond us.”
“What did you write in your book, Ramus?”
“Nothing. There was nothing to write. I sat in the temple and read the walls. That's all.”
“Let me see.”
He smiled at her, but it was an ugly expression; not quite a sneer, but something with a dash of madness buried deep. “You can't read,” he said.
“Beko's back,” Noon called.
Nomi turned around and Noon, Ramin and Lulah were watching her and Ramus curiously. She tried not to catch their eyes.
Beko and the others arrived, and the captain dismounted. “The place I mentioned is just up ahead, on the other side of that low hill. It's even better than it was last time.”
“Better?” Nomi asked.
Beko smiled. “You'll see. It's the last night we'll be camping in Marrakash, so I think it's only fair we take advantage of the safety.”
They mounted up and rode, and Nomi kept pace with Beko. She did not look back to see where Ramus was. She felt certain that she was being watched, but it could have been the Serians' curiosity about their employers' exchange.
Let him play his games, she thought. Let him see doom in every tumbled wall. This will be the voyage of my life, and I intend to enjoy it.
She looked sideways at Beko and he grinned. And she wondered just what he had planned for that evening's campfire entertainment.
NOMI HAD BEEN determined to cook their meal that evening. But when she mentioned it to Beko, he shook his head.
“Believe me, let Rhiana cook tonight. We've been here before, and she knows what she's doing.”
“What's so special about here and tonight?” Nomi asked.
“Rhiana?” Beko said.
The tall Serian dropped gracefully from her horse. “It's a meal you'll remember for a long time,” she said. “Or maybe not at all.”
Beko had certainly found them a beautiful place
. Shielded from the cool evening breeze by a rocky outcrop, the level area was perfect for camping, with a soft bed of short grass and a scattering of stones with which to build a fire pit. A stream sprang from the ground to one side, gurgling merrily as though relieved to have found its way out of subterranean darkness. The marshy ground around the stream's birthplace was home to a profusion of small trees, bushes, orchids and a mix of berry shrubs. Some of them hung heavy with early fruit, while others rustled and shimmied with life. Nomi clapped her hands and watched small birds take flight. Lizards darted away into the cover of rocks, and a larger, more cautious creature went deeper into the undergrowth.
“You sure you want us to camp this near to so much wildlife?” Nomi said dubiously.
“I've camped here before,” Beko said. “I've never seen anything poisonous or harmful.”
Ramus sat across the clearing, leaning against a tree with hands on knees and eyes closed. He kept his backpack close. Let him play his games, she thought again.
She turned back to Beko. “So, what are we eating?”
“That's up to you and me.”
BEKO LED NOMI across the stream, through a bank of heavy shrubs and down into the borders of a small forest at the bottom of the hill. It was cool beneath the trees, calming, the sound of the stream complimented by the gentle swish and sway of the canopy in the evening breeze. It felt as though they had entered nature rather than disturbed it; birds continued singing, and Nomi saw the shadows of three small deer nosing through the bracken deeper in the forest. She did not mention them to Beko.
That was another way Ramus mocked her. If you had to kill your own food, he would say, you'd live on root vegetables and berries. Well, now she was hunting with Beko. And if they were to eat as well as he promised this evening, something had to die.
But not the deer. She walked quickly ahead, stomping her feet and stepping on a fallen branch. The crack sounded like a whip. The deer shapes froze and then melted quickly away between the trees, almost as if they were shadows that could disperse rather than run.
“Don't worry,” said Beko. “It's not deer we're after.” He walked past her and unslung the bow from his back. He looked up into the tree canopy, down at the ground, shifted the leaves and twigs around with one foot. “We'll have to go deeper.”
“What are we hunting?”
“Green tree lizards.”
“They're poisonous!” Nomi said. When she was a young girl some of her friends had fed a green tree lizard to a farm wolf, and they had laughed and danced as it squirmed in agony and died. She could still hear its howls, and she could still hear her own hesitant laughter as she tried to join in.
“Don't worry so much, Nomi,” Beko said. He stepped close, grinned and touched her on the shoulder.
A touch, she thought. Not a squeeze or a clap. He touched me. And as she realized that he was closer than he should have been, he turned and walked away.
Nomi put her hand to her neck as she followed the Serian, as though she would feel something different there. On their previous voyage they had grown close, but neither of them had let romance grow between them. Nomi because she had still been involved with Timal at the time . . . and Beko? Why had he held back? For a while she had assumed that it was in deference to her own wishes, but as time passed and Timal left, she had believed that less and less.
Perhaps it was this new voyage, and where they were going, and the feeling that this was something different. She smiled at Beko's back and followed him into a bank of high bushes.
“Slow,” he whispered, crouching down and walking slower. He held the bow at his side so that it did not snag on undergrowth.
Nomi imitated his pose, trying to walk in his footsteps. She could not hear him—no breathing, no rustling clothes. She was certain that she would spoil this hunt. Her trousers whispered as she walked, and her open jacket caught on a sprig of bracken and whipped it back. She closed her eyes and breathed through her mouth, and when she looked again Beko was staring back at her.
He stared for a little too long.
“What?” she whispered, but she thought she knew. Her stomach was warm, her legs shaking under the stress of her pose and the influence of his stare.
Beko pointed up and to his left. Nomi looked and saw several green tree lizards roosting on a tree trunk, the largest of them easily the length and thickness of her arm. She gasped. She had never seen one so huge.
Beko was still looking at her, and he blinked slowly as he began to turn away.
She thought he would move slowly, getting into position, plucking the arrow from the quiver across his back, stringing it, turning, aiming and firing only when he knew the moment was right. But as she looked back up at the lizard, she saw a flutter of movement from the corner of her eye, and then an arrow struck home. The lizard hissed for a heartbeat and then hung still, impaled against the trunk. Its companions disappeared around the tree, and a heartbeat later Nomi heard them dropping to the forest floor and away.
“That was so fast,” she said. “I didn't even see you move.”
“I'm hungry,” Beko said, grinning. He had already shouldered the bow and was heading for the tree.
“But they are poisonous,” Nomi said. “I know for sure.”
“Only if you don't know how to cook them properly.” He reached the tree, drew his sword and stretched to hack through the arrow. The lizard fell and Beko caught it neatly in one hand. “Waste of an arrow, but it'll be worth it.”
“We should go deeper,” Nomi said. Her heart suddenly beat faster, and her face flushed as she looked away from the captain and through the trees into the forest's deepening darkness. “Might find some peace truffles. Good for relaxing.” I'm not looking for truffles, she thought, all too aware of Beko's gaze once again. She could almost feel where he was looking: her hair, her neck, her breasts. Or perhaps that was her own wishful thinking.
“No need for peace truffles,” he said. He was standing right beside her, though she had not heard him move. The dead lizard nudged against her leg. “And no need to go deeper.”
Nomi closed her eyes. The coolness of the forest air soothed her hot skin as a breeze ventured between the trees. What am I doing? she thought. She knew well enough that a long voyage could be made awkward by an involvement such as this, but—
Beko's hand brushed across her stomach and stole down between her thighs, pressing there gently, weakening her legs and making her gasp.
“Beko . . .” she said, turning to him at last. She could hear his breathing now, fast and shallow. He was looking at her as though he could see her soul.
Timal never looked at me like that, she thought, and with her ex-lover's name in her mind, things fell apart. The pleasant coolness beneath the trees turned cold. Beko sensed it and moved away, looking down at the lizard swinging from his hand.
“It's me,” Nomi said. “It feels wrong.”
“It doesn't feel wrong to me,” the soldier said, and there was something so vulnerable in his voice that Nomi almost went to him. She looked at his scarred face and remembered how awkward he had seemed when he first spoke free poetry to her, sitting alone in a Ventgorian stilt house. He had loved and lost, and only someone with such experience could recite like that.
“We've a long way to go,” Nomi said. And as if that could explain everything, she turned and started walking back uphill.
“Nomi,” Beko said. She smiled at him, because he was already grinning again. “I can be very persistent. I should tell you, in case you see a problem in that.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Then persist.” She turned away again, scolding herself as she walked, grinning, wondering what doors had been opened and which hidden places they would reveal.
BY THE TIME they returned to the camp, the others had lit a fire and started pitching tents. The horses were tethered loosely in the trees, saddles lay ready around the fire and Rhiana was foraging across the marshy ground by the stream. She eyed the green tree lizard appreciatively, then
glanced quickly at Nomi.
“Good hunting?” she asked.
“I look forward to seeing how you feed us that and keep us all alive,” Nomi said, only half joking.
Rhiana opened her hand and showed Nomi a mixture of berries, leaves and dirt-encrusted root. “Magic,” she said.
Nomi was glad to see that the Serians had also erected her tent. She slipped inside and pulled the flap closed. She sat down and sighed, wiping her hands across her face and feeling the grit and grime on her skin. The heat of her arousal was fading but the memory was still there, an imprint of Beko's brazen and confident touch. A stroke against her stomach, soft as a butterfly's wings, and then the firm pressure of his hand between her legs. He was a warrior and a poet, and she could not help but wonder which one had touched her. She was excited, but also slightly unnerved. She was not like some other Voyagers, setting themselves above their hired help. Yet she could conceive of nothing but trouble if she and Beko . . .
“There's nothing wrong with a hump,” she whispered.
But there was something wrong, and it took a moment of silence and privacy to acknowledge what that was: Ramus. The other Serians would likely offer jibes and make fun of them if she and Beko were together, but Ramus was something else entirely. Their complicated friendship made other aspects of their relationship equally intense: the jealousies, the resentfulness. But I've never wanted him in that way. Not Ramus. He's too cold, too serious, too . . .
Too much like I want to be? The voice and thought were her own, and yet they seemed to come from elsewhere. Perhaps from the person she would have been had she returned from Ventgoria dying, not cured.
“Piss!” she hissed. “Piss on it all!” She should go outside, watch Rhiana cook and spend the evening with her traveling companions, doing her best not to let such concerns intrude.
