by Tim Lebbon
There were birds up here, all of species strange to them. They twittered and whistled, sang and called, and for a while Nomi and the others were buzzed by a playful flock of small ocher birds. One of them landed on Beko's shoulder, another alighted on Rhiana's head, and after eating seeds from Nomi's palm they disappeared as quickly as they had arrived. She had plucked the seeds from a plant she did not know: stout green stem, wide white flowers, a bright red central seedpod.
I wish Ramus were here with me, she thought, and she felt a sudden pressure behind her eyes. How useless to let it go the way it had! How foolish, how stupid! They had let their closeness drive wedges between them—irrational jealousies and unforgivable betrayals destroying such a special, unique relationship. They had started this voyage together and they should still be together, here and now, to witness the wonders of this new land. There were much greater things than her and Ramus, if only the two of them had acknowledged that.
But I killed him. She thought of the agony of the sickness she had passed on. Hardly the gift of a friend.
“I wonder if Lulah and Ramus made it up,” Beko said.
“I was thinking the same.” Nomi looked past him to the east, the lush greenness atop the plateau to her right, the soft sea of cloud cover stretching toward the horizon on her left. “If he did, he'd have gone inland. I'm sure there's plenty to explore.”
“Look!” Rhiana said.
Nomi followed where she was pointing, and at first she saw nothing. A few goats on a small, distant slope, green grass spotted with purple and pink plants, sprays of white flowers here and there among the grass, trees . . .
At least, some trees. But what she had taken to be a tree a couple of hundred steps away suddenly resolved itself into something else. Tall, spiked with branches, it had far too many straight edges.
“Someone made that,” Rhiana said.
They stared in silence for a beat, all of them thinking the same but leaving it to Nomi to say. “We're not alone.”
WE’RE NOT ALONE. Those words hung heavy in the air as the four of them stared at whatever the shape might be.
Nomi moved first. She slipped away from Beko's hand as he tried to hold her back, and ran. She heard the footfalls of the Serians following, and by the time she reached the shape, her legs were shaking again, and her body was telling her that there really was no energy left. She fell to her knees, leg muscles cramping, and looked up at what they had found.
It had been a tree, once. But its branches had been removed, its bark hacked away, trunk carved straight, and into the pale wood were impressed a series of faces and symbols. The faces were long and oval, eyes painted black. And projecting from the carving, at various heights, were long, thick sticks. Things hung from these false branches, and it took Nomi a moment to make out what they were.
Fetuses. Mummified somehow, but the curled shape of arms, legs and head were unmistakable. They had been painted along with the structure, elaborately decorated with heavy dyes that held the elements back.
“Piss on me,” Rhiana said quietly.
“They're not real,” Beko said.
Nomi shook her head. “They are.”
“They look wrong,” Noon said. “Like they were stretched when they were born. Look at their heads. And their arms: too long.”
“These are unborn,” Nomi said. “Not fully formed.” She tried not to think of where they had come from, how they had been removed from their mothers.
Rhiana stepped forward and reached out for one of the lowest hanging things.
“No!” Beko said. “We don't know anything about this place. We can't just storm in and do our own thing.”
“I just wanted to—” Rhiana said, but Nomi cut in.
“Beko's right. We have to be careful. We need to respect whoever did this.”
“Or whatever,” Noon said. “It's monstrous!”
“We don't know anything about them, or what this is about, or why they did it,” Nomi said. The responsibility of what they were doing struck her then, and she could say no more.
“We should move on,” Beko said for her. “Maybe this is something holy for whoever lives up here. We should find the lie of the land. But we have to be careful.”
Rhiana chuckled. “I'm down to two arrows, Noon is out of crossbow bolts. And I don't think I could lift my sword in both hands if I had to. How careful do you think we can be?”
“Careful enough to show respect,” Beko said. “There's nothing to say we're facing a fight.”
Nomi let Beko hold her up this time, and they walked away, leaning against each other. Noon and Rhiana went ahead, glancing back several times at the gruesome fetus-tree, and Nomi saw true exhaustion in their features for the first time. We need to rest, she thought, or we'll be making mistakes. But as they walked, she felt her sense of wonder extend to Beko—the idea that they were seeing things never before seen by Noreelan eyes. With such discoveries to make, sleep was the last thing she wanted.
IT FELT LIKE forever since the sun had touched their skins. They walked toward where it was setting, and Nomi relished the warmth, and thought of that high, dark cliff that the sun barely kissed. It soothed her cooled bones and calmed her cramped muscles.
They followed the line of the cliff for a while, and her vision was still split between land and cloud. It reminded her of those parchment pages, and the line on each sheet that Ramus had said described the Great Divide. She was on the other side now, the side where words and images were drawn, away from the blankness beyond the cliff wall.
When the bizarre tree was out of sight behind them they turned south and headed for what Nomi thought of as inland. They passed several more trees, but these were still growing, and bearing natural fruits. She had never seen anything like them: spindly branches, silvery bark, small husky fruits with spiked skins to protect them from birds and other predators. Their route took them into a natural hollow in the side of a hill, and here they decided to camp. Beko, Rhiana and Noon gathered a few steps from Nomi and talked in hushed tones, looking around and never once glancing her way.
When Beko came back to her, his face was grim.
“What's wrong?” Nomi asked.
“Worried,” he said, and he sat beside her without elaborating.
“Well?” she asked after a pause.
“It's a new world,” Beko said. There was fear in his voice now instead of wonder. “We're spending our first night out in the open, we're all beyond exhaustion and we have no idea who or what is out there. And that tree . . .”
“It doesn't mean they're dangerous.”
Beko glared at her.
Nomi shrugged. “Could have been stillborn. A religious thing, a superstition.” Beko drew a short knife and a sharpening stone and began to work, meticulous and slow. “I can't help remembering the bodies we saw down on the cliff.”
“They could have fallen.”
“Or maybe some were pushed.”
He continued sharpening his weapons, and Nomi found the sound soporific. She leaned her head against Beko's shoulder, and he nestled down a little to make her more comfortable.
“What about us?” she asked, half-asleep and less afraid of his answer.
“When this is over,” he said. “When it feels safe. When we know more about this place . . .” He said some more, but his voice faded into words and phrases she did not understand, and sleep welcomed her down.
IF SHE HAD nightmares she did not remember them. She had gone to sleep expecting her rest to be unsettled, waking when the night sounds of this place began, dreaming of the climb they had finished and the fall they had avoided. But when she woke it was daylight again. Her joints were stiff and her muscles ached, and Beko was crouched beside her with his hand pressed to her mouth.
“Be still,” he said. “And quiet. That most of all.”
Nomi nodded and he took his hand away.
Behind Beko she could see Noon and Rhiana crouched at the lip of the hollow where they had made camp. They were
looking east, their outlines silhouetted against the rising sun. Noon had his sword drawn, and Rhiana was holding her bow, strung with one of her remaining arrows. They were very still, very quiet, and their tension was palpable.
In the distance, Nomi heard something screech. Another voice answered, a cry followed by a series of harsh rattles and cracks.
Beko had turned away and Nomi touched his leg. When he looked, she raised her eyebrows. What?
He leaned in close and whispered in her ear. “Things out on the grassland. We've seen four but I think there may be more. Big. Fast.” But Nomi knew he had not told her everything. She sat up and crawled toward Noon and Rhiana, Beko by her side.
He held her shoulder just before she reached them, and whispered again. “They're strange. Like people, only different. Best to warn you.”
Nomi nodded, not quite sure what he meant. Once beside Rhiana, she pulled herself up the small incline and peered over the top. At first she could see nothing moving save shifting shadows thrown by bushes rustling in the breeze. The wind took her breath away for a beat—a cool gust that seemed to usher in the rising sun. It brought smells she did not recognize from places she had yet to visit.
She heard that cry again, followed by the same clicks and rattles as before. If there was language in there it was strange, and unrelated to anything she had ever heard. Then she saw the first shape. It emerged from the landscape two hundred steps away: tall, stooped, long legs marching it delicately but speedily across the grassland, long arms hanging down and ending in wide hands. Its head stood atop a short thin neck, and gray hair hung down in tied bunches around its face. It was too far away to make out for sure, but from what Nomi could see it looked almost human. And it wore clothing.
She gasped. “What the piss is that?”
“There are several of them out there,” Rhiana said. “Just wandering around. I've been watching them since sunup. Not sure if they're looking for food or just walking the night from their bodies. When they meet up, they communicate with those strange clicks, and they touch one another as well. I'd say they're half as tall again as me, but they're hunched down. And they're all wearing clothing of some sort, though most of it looks like rags tied on with string. Nothing too elaborate. I don't think you've found a new fashion for Long Marrakash.”
Nomi looked sidelong at the Serian, but she was not smiling. “Do you think they're dangerous?” she asked.
Rhiana shrugged. “No way of knowing, so for now I assume yes.”
“They must be the ones who made that tree,” Noon said.
“Maybe,” Beko said. He had moved up beside Nomi. “Maybe not.”
They watched the creatures for a while. Several of them gathered together and seemed to sit and talk. They were never quite still; their heads swayed, their bodies shifted as though waving in the wind. As the sun left the horizon, something seemed to alarm them, and they stood as one and ran quickly into the distance. In a few beats they were out of sight, their clicking calls still just reaching the Voyagers where they lay.
“They were definitely human,” Beko said.
Nomi frowned. Almost, she thought. Or maybe they had been once. Something about them bothered her, and it was not only their exaggerated appearance—longer legs, taller bodies. The way they had sat together talking, bodies shifting to the breeze, gray hair tied in elaborate-looking braids, their clothing rough and ragged but also cut in very particular ways . . .
“What do you think?” Rhiana asked. She stared at Nomi, obviously expecting an answer.
“I'm not sure,” she said. “I had no real idea of what to expect up here.” Rhiana grunted, nodded and went back to their camp.
“So what now?” Beko asked.
Nomi smiled. “Now we explore.”
RHIANA KILLED A creature that looked like a cross between a rabbit and a sheebok. Its chunky back legs were still shaking as she dragged it back into their camp, and they only stopped when she gutted and skinned it. They debated briefly about the merits of starting a fire, but hunger overcame caution. Half an hour later they were picking slices of cooked meat from a stick propped over the fire, and it tasted incredible. Soft, moist, sweet, the smoke gave it a tang that negated the need for any herbs or spice. They ate in contented silence.
Rhiana extinguished the fire and buried the ashes, and they left the remains of the creature for scavengers.
They headed south. The plains rose and fell in gentle undulations as far as they could see, and maybe twenty miles in the hazy distance they saw the darker smudge of thickly forested slopes. The trees seemed to be various shades of red, and clouds hid the tops of whatever hills or mountains they skirted.
As they walked, Nomi thought of the Sleeping God. Without the parchment pages—and without Ramus's ability with languages—there was no way for her to tell where the mythical God was supposed to be. This plateau was huge. Twenty miles deep at least, and if it truly ran from east coast to west, several hundred miles wide. But they had seen firelight on the cliff that first night, and assuming it was Ramus and Lulah, they were climbing only miles apart. That gave her confidence. If Ramus had found a reason to climb in this particular place, then she could find it as well.
But as they walked south, a whole new aim presented itself in her mind. They were not only on top of the Great Divide, but also heading toward whatever might lie beyond. The joy of discovery was clear in her mind, a very sharp aim that had been temporarily appeased upon reaching the head of the Divide, but which now bit harder than ever before. South, there were hills or mountains, and beyond those . . . who knew? More mountains? Another new world?
She knew that at some point she would have to return to Long Marrakash, but such a return could wait.
“Shouldn't you be recording this somehow?” Beko asked as they walked.
“Can you draw, Captain?” Nomi asked, smiling.
“Badly.”
“Can you write?”
“Barely.”
“Badly and barely are about my limits as well. But I can see, feel and smell. And that's good enough for me.”
“But what will they say when we go back? What about the Guild?”
Nomi was silent for a while, thinking about what she wanted to say and what it really meant. It felt good and pure, but there was also an aspect of separation that she had not yet vocalized to anyone. “I'm doing this for me,” she said. “Voyaging . . . it's about fame or fortune, or perhaps both. For me, the Ventgorian trips were about fortune, and I've made that. But now we've found this place, I realize how superficial that really is. I've never known the true heart of voyaging, not like . . .”
“Ramus,” Beko finished.
“I only hope he's all right,” she said quietly. She looked east, her view across the landscape soon blocked by trees and the contours of this high place. The air smelled fresher and sweeter up here; the sky was a deeper blue and the sun was warmer on her skin than she had experienced for a long time. Ramus would have loved such differences. They would tell him that he was somewhere else, and Nomi prayed to whatever gods would listen that he was feeling and seeing them right now.
BY MIDDAY, THEY had barely traveled two miles. The terrian was easy, but there was so much to see that they paused every hundred steps to examine something new.
They found snakes that carried hundreds of young on their backs. The serpents hissed and reared up when anyone drew near, but from a distance they seemed placid and calm. They ranged from yellow through to a deep brown, and their young waved infantile heads at the air, smelling every new scent. They saw fat, bulbous fungi that popped audibly when they were touched, releasing a mist of spores into the breeze. Noon worried about infection, disease and poison, but Nomi shrugged and carried on. If they were to contract a disease and die up here, it would happen, however careful they were.
Around the base of one large rocky mound, they saw hundreds of stones beginning to move. They ground and rumbled together, and it was only when the explorers approached closer
that they saw legs protruding from the stones' undersides. There were small pincers hidden away too, flashing out when flies or bees came close and snapping back inside the stony shells as the creatures ate.
They moved on from one wonder to the next. Amazing new sights—animals or plants that resembled those they had known from Noreela but which displayed marked differences—and several new things they could not understand at all. They found a tall metal pipe protruding from the ground, ragged with splits and rusted tears, and they did not know what it was for. Several parallel trenches in the ground, thirty steps long, contained watery sand, tinged green by some sort of moss and smelling of rotting fruit. More pipes crossed these trenches, pierced with regularly spaced holes and knotted together in complex joins. “Something up here builds,” Beko said, but Nomi was more amazed at the extracted, melted and molded metals.
She welcomed mysteries such as these, because to understand everything would be to equate this place to Noreela. It was not Noreela. They had traveled beyond the world they knew, and there was still some way to go.
THEY FOUND THE statue early that afternoon, about four miles in from the edge of the Divide. They had spent some time exploring a network of steaming pools and streams, and as they mounted a slope, they saw the shape outlined on top of the next small hill. It took an hour to reach, but long before they gathered around it and stared with a mixture of awe and disappointment, Nomi recognized what it was.
Carved from the bole of an old tree, the man gazed at them with black-painted eyes. It was obvious that the carving was quite old: the wood had cracked, parts of it were rotten and any sharp features had been smoothed by sunlight and weather. But there were signs that whoever had carved this image still visited. Garlands of dried flowers were gathered around its base like discarded clothes, and suspended from one wooden shoulder was a more recent floral tribute, still moist with decay.
