by Tim Lebbon
For a beat the creatures paused in their attack and looked up at him, clicking and hooting in shock or fear, or perhaps both.
Lulah turned and stared up at him also. Her dark skin had turned a sickly gray, blood drenched her clothing and she swayed where she stood, her eyelid drooping. The stud on her eye patch flashed in the sun. “I won't die like that!” she shouted into the silence.
Wait, Ramus wanted to say, but there was nothing to wait for.
Lulah turned and leapt from the step, sword raised, uttering a scream that surprised the two creatures below her into silence. She fell on them, her sword piercing a chest and slipping from her hand as she and the other creature started tumbling.
Ramus watched until he was sure she was dead. Then he drew in a huge breath, closed his eyes and screamed the words he should not know.
Chapter 21
A DISTANT SOUND faded away to nothing and Nomi's skin crawled. The breath was squeezed from her, her flesh felt suddenly too expansive for her body and her skin contracted. She fell to her knees on a carpet of pine needles and ants, and as she leaned forward the ants reared up, preparing to fight something a million times their size with blind instinct.
She gasped at last, releasing some of the pressure, extending the sound into a drawn-out groan that seemed to bleed tension from her bones and muscles. Ants crawled on the stickiness of her leg wound and she flicked them off. The tree canopy above her grew silent. She clasped her hands to her stomach and wondered what was there, whether it was safe or dead, and for the first time she cared.
The silence was broken again by the thundering sound of rocks tumbling and rolling down a cliff. A landslide? Nomi could not feel the ground shaking, and the noise ended as suddenly as it had begun.
She stood and stumbled on, soon finding her pace again. To her left the forest was obscured by a low mist, and here and there she saw movement as though shapes were passing through. She paused and hid low several times, but the shapes never manifested into anything solid. If it were them, they'd have come at me by now, she thought, and the next time she saw movement she ignored it and hurried on.
The tree cover ended suddenly, and there was not only nature before her, but something beyond nature. The breath was knocked from her. Taller than any building she had ever seen, more intricate, terrifying in its mass and height, awe-inspiring in its ambition . . .
But there was something wrong.
At first she thought the building had been damaged, such was the profusion of jumbled stones around its base and littering its stepped sides. She moved closer, though every instinct told her to turn and flee, and the wildlife around her suddenly burst into life. Perhaps the birds and ground creatures had been scared, but no more. Something here had ended.
Nomi saw a head made of stone. It lay on the shiny black ground around the base of the huge building. This is what I heard, she thought. These statues of Sentinels, falling. But what made them fall?
She looked up at the steps of the building, and here and there she could make out other statues. Some of them were broken, but a few still stood tall and proud on the steps where they had been placed.
And then she saw the blood.
And scattered amongst the stone statues she made out several Sentinel bodies, only these were flesh and blood. Some missed body parts, others seemed to have been pierced by arrow or knife.
None of them moved.
“Ramus,” she whispered, because this was the place Sordon had directed her to, the gateway, the entrance, and such violence could only have been the result of Ramus's presence.
She stared at the bottom of the building and scanned upward, and when she reached the top she saw the figure pacing there. It walked around the edge of the structure's flattened summit, passing out of sight and appearing again, taking the same route over and over. Nomi shaded her eyes against the sun, trying to make out whether it had long arms and legs, or whether it was someone . . .
Someone she knew.
“Ramus!” she shouted.
The figure halted at the edge of the summit. Birds fell silent once again, at the sound of her voice. His name echoed from the building as though it were shouting back at her, and she realized how foolish and impulsive she had been.
Ramus had just killed these Sentinels with the power of his voice.
Nomi backed away a few steps, bringing her hands up to cover her ears. But then she stopped because she was fascinated. There he was, her old friend and new nemesis, standing at the gateway to the Fallen God, and this was truly the greatest voyage anyone had ever undertaken. Sordon Perlenni may have been here long before them, but he had stayed, and now madness informed his every movement and thought. Surely she and Ramus could make more of this place?
“He says it's fallen!” she shouted.
Ramus may have responded, or perhaps it was her own words echoing back again. But between one blink and the next he vanished. And the only way for her to go was up.
SHE CLIMBED, AVOIDING the Sentinel bodies where she could. Most of them were broken into several chunks or completely shattered, but the ones that must have been killed before Ramus used the curse still cooled into the stone. Arrows had killed a couple, knives some more, and farther up the building she found a Sentinel's head that must have tumbled down from above.
She resisted the temptation to stop and stare at the carvings, images, small faces sunk into the stone, lines of strange writing and symbols displayed all across the side of the incredible building. Their time might come, but for now there was something even more incredible to find.
She found Lulah a dozen steps from the top. The Serian's throat had been ripped out and her arm torn off, but two dead Sentinels lay with her, one of them bearing teeth marks in its own gashed throat. Blood still dribbled from the wound. Nomi paused for a moment to look into the dead warrior's pale eye, then she carefully took the last knife from Lulah's belt and continued upward.
Five steps from the top, exhausted and in pain from the leg wound, which had started bleeding again, Nomi heard Sentinels calling and clicking behind and below her. When she reached the summit she looked down, knowing what she would see.
They were already climbing. They seemed unconcerned at their dead comrades, passing by both shattered-stone and bloodied-flesh corpses without a glance. They had eyes only for her. And for the first time in the face of a Sentinel, even from this distance, she saw purpose.
Nomi turned around to see what Ramus had been circling when she first saw him.
There was an opening on top of the building. It disappeared into a circular staircase that led down, the stairs just as deep as those she had recently climbed. It was covered by an elaborate stone canopy propped on pillars, various drainage channels carved into the floor to guide rainwater away from the hole. The entrance was dark and forbidding. Nomi inhaled the must of ages.
She could enter the hole, as Ramus had done, or wait here to be slaughtered. There really was no choice. After her climb, Nomi began her descent.
IT QUICKLY GREW dark. She sat on the edge of a step and slid down to the next one, moving fast, conscious of the Sentinels racing up the sides of the building outside. I could just leave him to them, she thought, surprised that the idea had not come sooner. Could have gone down the other side of the building and hidden, let them come in after him, find him . . .
But there was more to this than whatever may or may not be hidden down here, more than exploration and discovery. There was Ramus and her.
As the huge circular staircase curved around to the left, the light from above faded away, leaving her in complete darkness. She felt her way to the edge of the next step and slipped out into the void, finding stone beneath her feet. She repeated the process again and again, and every time she slipped from the level surface she feared that it would be the last step, and the next drop would be a hundred times greater.
“Ramus!” she shouted. Her voice echoed away, above and below her, but nothing answered back. He could be too far
down, she thought. Or maybe he doesn't want to answer.
Perhaps he was dead.
If he had fallen from the last step, and she fell too, she could die when she hit his remains. They would rot down here together in an eternal embrace, never having said they were sorry.
“Ramus!” she called again. “Wait for me!”
There was no answer, so she carried on falling. After a while she realized she should have been counting the steps. There had been maybe a hundred steps up to the top of the building, and she had come down perhaps thirty. Seventy more like this until she reached ground level. Or less, if whatever this building contained was hidden away at its very heart. Or more, if it was simply the gateway to somewhere deeper and darker. An abyss, Sordon had said. It may have been a hundred steps up, but Nomi was suddenly terrified that it was a thousand back down.
She went on, and when she paused a few steps later she heard shuffling sounds from above her, and the crackling sounds of Sentinels communicating. They were descending, but they sounded cautious, no longer hooting in anger, and perhaps they were coming down here for the very first time. She knew so little about them. Sordon had told her some, venting his guilt at her whether she wanted to hear it or not, and now she wished she had asked him more. He had been up here for so long. . . .
“They're coming down, Ramus!” she shouted. “The fallen sleeper cannot wake, and they're here to make sure of that!” Her words echoed before her and she listened for a response. Again, nothing.
The stone became slimy. Water trickled somewhere in the darkness, and Nomi's hands slipped on the slick surface. Warmth wafted from below and she paused again, breath held as she tried to make out what had just happened. Her heart hammered against her chest, blood pulsed in her ears, she heard a drip as blood from her leg fell to the step below. Another gush of warm air, and this time she breathed it in to see what it contained.
“Breath of a God,” a voice said beside her.
Nomi screamed. A hand clasped across her mouth and pressed hard, and when she struck out, another hand grabbed her arm. She was pulled back onto the flat surface and pushed down, struggling, kicking at empty air.
“Nomi.” The voice spoke again, as quiet as before yet filling the darkness. “It's me.”
Nomi stopped struggling. The hand lifted from her mouth, though she could still sense it just above her face, ready to push down again should she scream.
“Ramus,” she whispered. “The Sentinels are coming.”
“Sentinels? That makes sense. I can hear them. Slow. They're scared. They know what's down here, and they're scared.”
“Do you know what's down here?” she asked.
For a beat the darkness did not answer. She sensed Ramus move away from her, and only then did he speak. “I'm a Voyager. I'm here to find out. We found somewhere, didn't we, Nomi? Didn't we find somewhere?”
We're not the first, she wanted to say. There was so much to tell him, but here and now was not the place.
“You're pregnant,” he said.
“How . . . ?”
“You gave me the gift of your nightmares, remember?”
“I'm sorry,” she said, and two simple words spoken into endless darkness made her feel so much better.
Ramus snorted softly but did not reply.
“Ramus, we can't wake this thing. We know nothing about it. We don't know—”
“I know,” he said. “It's here with me, and it will guide me down. Do you see?”
“No, I don't understand.”
“I mean, do you see, Nomi? I see. I see you huddled there, staring into a darkness deeper than you've ever imagined, wondering whether the next step will drop you into an abyss. But the Sleeping God gives me sight, and I can see the way.”
“It's a Fallen God, Ramus.”
“And who judges what falls and what does not?”
Nomi did not understand the question and could offer no answer. “Are you going to kill me?” she asked.
Ramus laughed then, a soft sound that whispered away below them. She wondered what his laughter found down there, and whether it was ready.
“No,” he said. “You've said you're sorry. And I think, really, you gave me more than you could know.”
Nomi leaned forward, reaching for where she thought Ramus sat. She touched clothing and held on, pulling him closer, laying her hand on his face and trying not to let go. “Ramus, you don't know what's in your head.”
“I do know,” he said. “It is in my head, and it got there through the sickness it knows so well. Mind-worms, you told me, Nomi? I think you were lied to. I think you breathed something of a Sleeping God, back there in Ventgoria.”
“No . . .”
“Yes! Maybe the final breath of an old God dying. Maybe something more.”
“But if you wake the Fallen God . . . have you thought about that? Have you really thought about what it might do?”
“No,” he said. He laughed again. “If you could only see your face. No, Nomi, I haven't thought about it. I don't need to. I don't care. This is what I was born for. This is the greatest voyage ever.”
“It's doing this to you! This isn't you, Ramus, this is—”
“Did you untie your charm?”
Nomi blinked, surprised at the question. She remembered the rope charm sinking quickly into the pool, and her fear that had sent it there. “No,” she said.
Ramus was quiet for a beat. “Then you'll never know what I gave you, ” he said. And he slipped away.
Nomi shouted after him at first, then followed, almost losing control and sending herself tumbling several times. But fast though she moved, Ramus moved faster.
“It'll lie to you!” she called.
But Ramus was gone. And even if he did hear her pleas, he chose not to answer.
Nomi continued down, feeling more alone in this absolute darkness than she had ever thought possible.
THE SLEEPING GOD called him down and showed him the way. It was still there inside him, giving and taking dreams and nightmares from the cancer eating his brain. It sat beside the cancer—memory of another Sleeping God? Perhaps, perhaps not—and called it weak. Maybe it could remove it entirely, but this was not what drove Ramus. It had been a passing thought, but he considered it no more. He was used to the idea of dying, but now the God gave him the chance to achieve something before he went away. Have you really thought about what it might do? Nomi had asked. He had, and it did not matter. The Sleeping Gods were myth and legend, just like all the other gods worshipped in Noreela and perhaps beyond. Myth and legend.
As a Voyager, it had always been his one aim in life to find the truth. This greatest truth would make him the greatest Voyager.
He could see every step, every sigil carved into the wall of the giant staircase, every thin stalactite hanging from the ceiling. He could see them because the God gave him sight beyond light. And it called him down.
Nomi shouted after him for a while, and then she started descending again. It would take her a long time. Ramus saw the way and he slipped down, down, not needing to count the steps because the God would let him know when he was nearing the bottom.
He came to a step whose edge had cracked and fallen away. He had to move in close to the central column to bypass the break, easing himself carefully down to the step below, only a foot's width of stone beneath his feet this close to the center.
Nomi could fall here, he knew, and for an instant there was a flicker of something within him. Concern? Grief, already? Then the God whispered words he could not hear or understand, but their tone drew Ramus on.
Nomi had called those things Sentinels. Perhaps they had been, once, but that must have been in some distant past. The ruined village spoke of their fall, and the remains of unknown technologies were testament to where they had once been, and where they were now. But there were two questions that rang in his mind. Had the Sleeping God brought them here to defend itself? Or had someone or something else placed them here, to guard the Sleepin
g God?
Perhaps even hours ago, Ramus would have found the answer to that question of utmost importance. But now the God smiled at his querying mind, lulled him with whispered appeasements, and he felt its breath on his skin once more.
The breath of a Sleeping God, he thought, and the pungent clammy breeze became sweet and comforting.
After a while, he came to the bottom of the large spiral staircase. He waited on the final step and listened, and from far above came the faint sounds of someone else descending. He could not make out whether it was one person or many. Perhaps Nomi was still ahead of the Sentinels, perhaps not.
The staircase opened out into a huge cavern. There was true light down here, emanating from great swathes of moss growing across the floor, up walls and onto the ceiling of the cave. In a far corner, a thousand specks of light danced in the air, describing complex patterns that repeated again and again. Flies, perhaps, or something else entirely. Here and there, the floor was taken with shallow pools of water, reflecting the wondrous stalactites that hung down from the ceiling and creating landscapes of fantastic cities that never were, but may one day be.
The cave was utterly silent but for Ramus's labored breathing. He held his breath for a moment to take in the unspoiled wonder of this place.
Across the cave, in the shadows where floor and walls met in a drift of fallen rock, a darker shadow indicated the beginning of a tunnel. From that tunnel, illuminated from below by a splash of moss, came a faint waft of steam.
Where are you? Ramus thought.
The ground beneath his feet thumped, a gentle but definite movement, and the steam swirled as though disturbed from within.
Ramus walked across the cave. The flitting spots of light suddenly darted across the cave toward him and he hurried on, but they could move much faster. They gathered around him, never near enough for his waving arms to knock them aside, but this close that he could hear the hum of tiny wings. As he walked, so they moved, and he crossed the cave contained within a sphere of light. He could make out a curious synchronicity to their movements; some flitted this way, some the other way—whole groups of light-flies seemed to be describing the same patterns in the air again and again. The movement resulted in regular, angled light drawings all around him, morphing every few beats into something equally complex and wonderful. It was almost as if they acted with one mind.
