by Tim Lebbon
“Too late,” Lulah said, but too late for what, she did not say.
“This doesn't look that old,” Ramus said. “There are places like this in Cantrassa, abandoned when the farming land grew sterile. Maybe whoever was here moved on.”
“Maybe.” Lulah walked down the slope, shrugging the bow from her shoulder. She did not walk like someone who had recently climbed a three-mile cliff.
Ramus followed. He was very conscious of the roll of parchment pages in his backpack, the figures and writing displayed there, what that writing could do. He scanned the abandoned streets for signs of people, but there was nothing.
Animals lived in the village, and they seemed unconcerned by the new visitors. Birds continued to sing, ground-dwellers called and barked, and even as Lulah and Ramus approached the first building, there did not seem to be a hint of panic in the sounds.
“Wait here,” Lulah said. She strung an arrow and walked slowly into the village. Grasses swished about her legs, creeping plants tried to trip her, but she stepped lightly and never took her eyes from the buildings. Ramus noticed for the first time just how tall the main doorways into the buildings were.
He waited nervously. This place was no longer lived in, but that did not mean there was no one or nothing here. Perhaps they were being watched even now.
Lulah drew level with the first building. She paused there for a long time, like a person turned to stone. Then she glanced over her shoulder and nodded to Ramus.
By the time he joined her, she had moved to the front wall of the first building and was peering inside through an opening in the wall. If there had ever been a window shutter of some sort, it had long since vanished. Ramus looked in as well. The ceiling was holed, and it let in enough light for them to see one wall swathed in metal pipes. They were as thick as a finger and curved around one another, tied into junctions here and there that reminded Ramus of the rope charm he had bought for Nomi. Most of them were rusted, and a couple had ruptured and spewed blood-colored dust down the wall.
“Dead place,” Lulah said.
Ramus did not like her choice of words, but they felt right. Part of the building's roof lay in a tangle of timber beams and rotten thatch. Any furnishings had vanished, and the floor was carpeted in a mass of creeping plants. If he went inside, the undergrowth would reach his knees at least, and he was not sure he could fight his way through. There was no sign of any decoration, no carvings on the walls. Only those pipes.
“What do you think they were for?” he asked.
Lulah shrugged as she stepped back. “More there,” she said, pointing up. There were pipes passing across the spaces between buildings as well, many of them bowed with time. Some had bowed with others, while still others were propped and remained a dozen steps up, way out of reach. Spaced along the pipes were small boxy structures, with spiked wheels the size of a human hand attached to them.
“That one looks different.” Lulah headed deeper into the village, past several more ruined buildings, to one that was wider and slightly taller, and Ramus followed. The structure retained a heavy pair of doors, though they hung askew and their bottoms were shredded by rot.
What are we looking for? Ramus thought. He would give anything just for a sign.
When they came to the larger building, Lulah again went first. There were several steps leading up to the main doors, their dulled edges hidden by plant growth but obvious nonetheless. They looked too tall to Ramus, but perhaps that was an illusion.
Lulah peered inside, then shouldered one door aside and entered. Ramus lost sight of her. He waited nervously, looking around, watching for any movements that should not be there, any shadows lurking beside the building. There was nothing, and yet he felt watched.
“Here,” Lulah said from the doorway. She did not look concerned, yet there was a strange expression on her face.
“What?”
“See.” She disappeared back inside and Ramus entered the building.
Perhaps it had once been a place of worship. It had that air, that almost reverential way in which walls met and windows glared. Even below the carpet of plants, Ramus could see a row of stone seats, all facing toward the back wall of the building, which was curtained with a bright red-flowering plant. The other walls were somehow bare of plant growth, and on closer inspection he knew why. There were shapes carved into their surfaces, and these seemed sharper and more recent. He squinted against sunlight leaking in through the shattered roof, and then he saw what one spread of shapes went to make up: a face. It was long, bearded, and the eyes were stained black, but it was definitely a human visage. He looked around the walls and saw other places where this face was carved or scraped—a mix of large and small images. All of them seemed to represent the same person. Black eyes, heavy beard, mournful mouth. The representations were not expertly drawn, but Ramus had the sudden, chilling idea that he knew this person.
He blinked slowly and shook his head.
“What is it?” Lulah asked.
“Strange face.”
“Looks human to me.”
“I'm sure he is.” Ramus looked again, trying to ally the face with a memory, but nothing came. Of course not, he thought. We're the first here. But that suddenly seemed less than certain.
Lulah walked between the stone seats and approached the spray of red flowers. As she touched one thick stem and lifted it aside, a swarm of flies erupted from the plants, weaving and flexing through the air like one organism. They circled Lulah's head without landing, then came to Ramus. He felt the breeze of thousands of wings, but not one of them touched his skin. When they exited the open roof he could not shake the sense that he had been examined.
“Here,” Lulah said. “This one's definitely not human.” She lifted aside some of the heavy stems to reveal an intricate design on the wall, colors still vivid, shape stark.
Ramus caught his breath. There it is. It was more a series of diverse shapes than a single discernable form, but he knew straightaway what it was meant to represent. The swirls and curves, the spirals and twists, as though illustrating limbs curled in on themselves, back twisted around a sleeping form. An endlessly sleeping form.
He saw the stumps of wings, and thought, Fallen, but a throb of pain behind his eyes drove that idea down.
“Your God,” Lulah said quietly.
Ramus glanced at her, but he did not see the disrespect he 3 heard. Maybe it had been fear. Her eye was wide, and her dark skin seemed to have paled.
“That's it,” Ramus said. “But . . .”
“But where are its worshippers? My thoughts exactly.” She let the plants fall back into place, wiping her hands as if to rid them of something distasteful. “Maybe it's already woken up.”
“No,” Ramus said. But it was a plea more than a statement.
“Shall we move on?” Lulah said.
“I don't know,” Ramus said. “I'm not sure I can. Not now, not if I'm here too late. A whole new world, yes, but if that Sleeping God is awake . . .”
But he realized that if it was awake, then they had nothing to fear. This place had been abandoned for a long time, and whoever had once worshipped here was long gone. Perhaps the God had also vanished.
“I don't like the thought of resting here,” the Serian said.
“South,” Ramus said. “Maybe it went that way.”
Lulah shrugged because she had nothing to say.
“Deeper into exile,” he continued. “Fallen . . .” He felt the pain behind his eyes readying again, threatening like a raised fist, and that presence in his head seemed to expand larger than was possible.
“Come on,” Lulah said. “We'll go through the village and camp on its outskirts. I want to spend tonight on open ground, where we can see anything closing in.”
They went back out into the ruined settlement, moving from building to building and pausing only if they saw something new. The structures were basic but remarkable, lined and joined as they were with sprays of pipes and tubes, metal jun
ctions and thicker columns that entered the ground at regular intervals. Lulah tried to shake one such column, but it did not budge. To be so solid, it must have been buried deep.
Toward the center of the village, they found a small square. Unlike the buildings, it was not clogged with rampant plant growth, but there was a patch of trees that seemed to wave and lean even though there was no breeze. Mist hung around their roots, and when they drew closer, Ramus saw several small holes in the hard ground from which steam issued in short, weak puffs. Whatever forces existed beneath and between the trees' root systems set them shifting with power.
Lulah went close to one of the steam holes, knelt down and reached out with her sword. Moisture beaded on the blade and she drew back quickly. “Hot,” she said.
“Nomi should feel at home here,” Ramus said. “If they even made it up.” He saw Lulah's face darken at that, and he almost apologized. They were her friends he was talking about, after all.
“They'll have made it,” Lulah said. “We should move on.” She sheathed her sword and walked away from the gently moving trees.
They saw more likenesses of the bearded man, though not every carving or etching was the same. When formed in rock, many of the images had weathered, showing that they had been there for some time. Those formed in wood—plaques on the sides of ruined buildings, carved into the trunks of trees—the elements had aged, drying the timber until some images were split in many places. In some of the older impressions, he seemed unbearded, leaner, as though they followed his years.
“I know that face,” Ramus said.
Lulah shook her head. “If it's a god of theirs, I doubt that.”
“Is it a god?” Ramus asked. “We saw what they worshipped. And I hope it still sleeps. But this . . . ? Him . . . ?”
Most of the buildings they saw were open, with doors missing, roofs caved in and windows absent or almost decayed to nothing. But as they came within sight of the far edge of the village— there were woods beyond, over a bridge crossing a small stream—they saw a building that seemed relatively intact. The door was off its hinges but leaned against its frame, allowing only a small gap for animal and plant ingress. The thatched roof was heavily bowed but whole, and the windows had been covered with rough boards nailed across from the outside.
Ramus could not resist the mystery of such a place.
“We should go,” Lulah said. “We need to find a place to rest for the night. You're exhausted, Ramus, I can see it in your eyes. And your illness . . .”
Ramus nodded, but then looked at the small building again. “One more look,” he said.
That face, he thought. By all the gods, I know that face, and 3 the next time I see it carved or formed somewhere, I'll stare until I give it a name.
They approached the leaning door and Lulah lifted it to one side. It fell with a crash and Ramus held his breath, glancing around the village. They had come all the way through without seeing anything larger than a small bird, yet still he felt as though they were intruding somewhere sacred.
“After you,” Lulah said. She pointed at the doorway and Ramus entered.
It was not as dark as he had expected. A window in the far wall had been stripped of boards, and the blank opening let in a stream of light. The inside was composed of one large space, and it was a landscape of humped shapes, all of them covered with a thick layer of moss. Plants grew here and there, but they were the wide-leafed, short-stemmed plants of dark places.
Ramus reached out for the first bulky shape, scraped moss from its surface and leaned over to see what was revealed. It was a large wooden box, about the size of the coffins some of the Cantrassan peoples used to bury their dead. He wondered whether they would at last see the builders of this place, or at least their time-withered remains.
“What's in there?” Lulah asked.
“Put your sword to the lid and we'll see.”
Lulah probed beneath the lid with her blade and heaved. It came off with a screech of metal leaving wood, and flipped over onto another box.
A cloud of dust wafted from within, and Ramus gasped. He knew that smell, that texture to his mouth and nose, because he worked with this so much. Old parchment.
“Let the light in,” Ramus said, and Lulah stepped aside.
The box was filled with rolls of parchment. Forty or fifty of them, neatly stacked side by side. A few at one end of the box were slumped into a decayed mess where moisture had penetrated, but the others were still strong and whole. Ramus reached out and touched one, almost afraid that it was some sort of hallucination brought on by his illness. Is Nomi seeing this right now, he wondered, and I'm just dreaming it? But the parchment was rough, dry and brittle beneath his touch, and when he brought his hand to his face he smelled the scent of ages.
“Three pages.” He sighed. “Three pages brought us so far. And now, look. Look at this.” He lifted out one roll and knelt, turning into the light from the open doorway. He unrolled carefully, wincing as he heard the crackle of the outer page splitting, but the inner sheets seemed to unfurl with little complaint.
“What does it say?” Lulah asked sharply. “What's it about?”
Ramus did not know. Some of the language he could recognize from the pages in his backpack, but much of what was symbolized there was a mystery to him. And that made him smile.
“I don't know,” he said. “Perhaps it's the history of a new world.”
“A new world that died,” Lulah said. She leaned over the box and looked inside, sniffing lightly at the dusty, age-rich scent.
“Maybe,” Ramus said. “But like I said, there are ruined places in Noreela as well. People move on.”
“Usually for a reason.”
A reason, Ramus thought, and he scanned the page before him for anything that could represent a Sleeping God. There was nothing immediately evident, and he lifted that sheet to see the one beneath.
“We should go,” Lulah said.
“But—”
“You'll have time to read your books, but not before we know this place is safe. We have no idea—”
The sound came from far away but it was different from any they had heard before. A clicking, throaty noise, obviously made by something larger.
Lulah glanced at Ramus, then went for the door, low and quiet. She pressed herself to the wall and scanned the street outside.
Ramus let go of the parchment and it rolled back into its original shape. So much here, he thought, but looking at Lulah tensed by the door, braided hair swinging gently as she squatted there ready, he knew that she was right. There was much to see and know, but safety must be their first concern.
If the Sleeping God really was close, perhaps here he would find directions for how and where to find it. Or perhaps it had been found already.
The noise came again, this time from farther away. Lulah retreated from the door until she was beside Ramus.
“I can't see anything,” she said. “But I thought I heard something big moving through the village.”
“How big?”
She looked at him, her one eye twinkling. “How should I know?”
Ramus picked up the parchment and held it to his chest. Lulah glanced at it then away again, and when she returned to the door, he followed.
They waited for a while, and when the noise did not return, Lulah led the way out into the street once more. Ramus helped her lean the door back against the doorway, to protect what lay inside as much as to leave things as they had found them. Then they headed cautiously south, and within a hundred steps they reached the stream. The timber bridge was strong, though the decking had rotted through here and there, and as they left the village behind Ramus felt a sense of relief.
There was a whole new civilization here! The implications for Noreela were only just impressing themselves upon Ramus, feeling their way through his shock and tiredness, and his fear of what may be sleeping. Another reason to never go back, he thought.
The carved human face glared at him from the
wall of the final building, and he wondered whether the decision to reveal or hide what they had found—and may yet find—was even his to make.
BEYOND THE VILLAGE there was a path leading into the forest. Lulah said it could have been an animal trail, but her nervousness was obvious as they followed it in between the trees.
They found the first stone man a mile south of the village. From a distance, it looked like a natural rock formation beside the path, but as they drew closer Ramus made out the features that could not hide what this was. His right arm had broken off, the break smoothed over time, and his solid face had been assaulted by the weather so that the features were blurred and indistinct. But it was obviously a man upon whom those words Ramus knew had been used, because around his feet they found the remnants of clothing, a rusted knife and a charm on a cracked leather thong.
Ramus picked up the charm, his eyes never leaving the man's vague face.
Lulah stood back, eye wide and hand closed around the handle of her sword. “Is this what Konrad became?” she said.
Ramus felt the dead Serian's finger hanging against his chest, a guilty weight. “Maybe,” he said. “They're words I learned, but I don't really know how to wield them.”
“Someone here does.”
Ramus turned from the petrified man, weighing the charm in his hand. It was a piece of hardwood, hewn into a horn or tusk and holed through the heavy end for the leather cord. Words had been carved into it, but he could not make them out. He was not even sure whether he knew the language. But he knew the intent.
“This is Noreelan,” he said, and his heart sank as he vocalized his thoughts. “I've seen charms like this for sale in Long Marrakash, imported from Pengulfin Landing. Carved from the wood of the wellburr tree, because it's the hardest wood they have. Heavy.” He could not stop staring at the charm. Someone was here before us, he thought. And if one, perhaps many. What's the chance of us coming across the only other person who has ever climbed the cliff?
“Those bodies we saw,” Lulah said. “On the way up. Maybe they didn't fall at all. Maybe they were thrown.”
