by Tim Lebbon
Ramus reached the far edge of the cave and stood before the tunnel entrance. The air was warmer and damper here, and a wisp of steam caressed his face like the touch of a forgotten lover. Within, the presence in his mind smiled.
He entered the tunnel. The light-flies spread out a little, creating a larger, weaker area of illumination, which moved with him. The tunnel was almost perfectly circular, the walls smooth except in a few places where the stone had crumbled. In these places, fleshy, gnarled plants peered through, like the impossibly deep roots of trees long since vanished from the surface.
Ramus wondered what he would find growing were he to excavate and pursue the course of these roots. The light gave the effect of the tunnel moving past him, rather than him moving through the tunnel. The walls flowed by, the floor whispered past his feet and he was being carried closer.
The shape in his mind grew slightly and made itself known once more, swallowing down the discomfort of his illness and sheltering him from the pain. Yes, now I am sure, he thought.
The tunnel curved to the left and dipped down. He passed through places where moisture hung heavy in the air, and steam drifted in veils that seemed too dense to float. He felt these veils break around him, his senses expanded beyond the realities and potentials of his own life and another thump transferred through the ground and into his feet.
He knew that he was below and far away from the building now, though he could not tell which direction he was taking. If the tunnel took him far enough north, it would end at the Great Divide. He thought that unlikely. This was a place very definitely of this new world, and even looking out across the cloud cover before the Divide would make it part of Noreela.
Ramus lost track of time. The flies hummed around him, drawing light shapes in the air and illuminating his path, and when he stopped, they stopped as well. He did so intermittently, listening for signs of pursuit. Nomi would come after him, her worry about what may be down here hiding the true reason for her descent: fascination. She wanted to see the God as much as he, and if he had suddenly turned around on that massive staircase and gone to leave, she would have continued down. They both wanted to be the first.
But he heard nothing behind him. If Nomi still came, she was keeping incredibly quiet. If the Sentinels had caught up with her . . .
The tunnel became warmer, more clammy, and he passed through thicker clouds of mist. Sometimes it seemed to touch and alter his perception of things, other times it simply dampened his clothes and beaded on his skin.
When the tunnel before him grew wider and taller, its walls splashed with light from beyond, the light-flies left.
He emerged into another cavern, much larger than the first. This one was home to a lake, its shores illuminated by the same curious moss, its surface reflecting the stunning array of stalactites that hung from the high ceiling. Perspective was difficult to make out with no real point of reference, but Ramus thought some of the hanging gallery of stalactites were the width of several men and fifty steps long. Their colors were a mixture of deep purples and a milky white, and all shades in between. Many seemed to strive to touch their reflections, though none broke water, and the only part of the high ceiling bare of them was directly above the island at the lake's center.
Stone cones broke the water's surface here and there, a couple close to the shore and many more farther out. Steam rose gently from some and gushed from others. It condensed on the ceiling high above and sprinkled the cavern with intermittent rain. Some of the rain fell onto the island and gave that place a glimmering sheen.
The surface of the water broke here and there, agitated by shapes Ramus could not quite make out. They did not surface for long. He also saw skimming things, leaving lines of expanding ripples in their wakes. They were small and many-legged, though none were still long enough for him to properly make out. They seemed to avoid the water close to the island, and the spit of land stood in a spread of calm. It almost looked as though it floated in a sea of darkness.
The island . . .
There was a building there, made from the same stone as that tall, pyramidal structure aboveground. This one was much simpler and more functional. A square, each side perhaps twenty steps in length, the flat roof twenty steps aboveground.
“Is that you?” Ramus asked. The thing in his mind shifted, sending ripples through his thoughts like shockwaves through a deep lake.
The walls of the building looked uneven, and though Ramus squinted he could not make out why. Rough stone? Carvings? He would have to cross the lake to find out. There were also eight or nine heavy, thick tubes protruding from the building, a couple of them curving out and dipping into the lake, the rest twisting and rising through the cavern and disappearing into the walls or ceiling. They looked to be made from stone, but he was certain they pulsed.
“Are you in there?” The building suddenly drew all his senses, made itself the center of his world, and the astonishing cavern and its flora and fauna faded away to the memory of a dream. There was Ramus and the building, and inside that building slept a God.
“I'll wake you,” Ramus said. His voice left him, and beats later it came back from the walls and ceiling of the cavern as a continuous whisper, an endless promise.
“Ramus,” a voice said.
Ramus blinked several times before remembering he could turn around. His muscles obeyed slowly, and he saw Nomi standing at the entrance to the tunnel. Steam flowed and twisted and made a wraith of her. It was only the blood on her face and the way she stood that confirmed to him that she was truly still alive.
RAMUS LOOKED AS though he had never seen her before. Nomi tried to stand up straighter, not sure why she wanted to hide her injuries from him. She certainly did not expect pity. For some reason, she felt the need to seem strong.
“Ramus,” she said again. She looked past him into the cavern, saw the lake and the island and what was built thereon, and she knew they had found it. “We have to go back.”
“You can't go back,” Ramus said, and she was not sure what he meant. He would not allow it? Or she could not?
I can, she wanted to say, but then she looked at the building again and realized how close they were to something remarkable. No one ever meets their gods, she thought.
“I'm going out there,” he said, pointing behind him without taking his eyes from Nomi's. “I'm going to see what we've found, and I'll go inside and touch it, and . . .” His gaze shifted slightly to the side, his attention suddenly elsewhere. Somewhere far beyond here, or deeper inside.
“No one ever meets their gods,” Nomi said. “Don't you wonder why?”
Ramus frowned and looked back at her, and she thought she had gotten through to him at last. But then he smiled. “Because they never give themselves the chance.”
Nomi still held Lulah's knife. She took a painful step forward, wincing at the pain in her leg. Something was broken in there, she could feel it like a white-hot dagger slicing into her shin every time she moved. She'd slid down onto one of the stairs, found a chunk of it missing and fallen down three more. She was amazed she had not cracked her skull or broken her back.
“Did you fall?” he asked, and the question carried so much weight.
“Who are you asking?” Nomi said. “You're looking at me, but are you asking something else?”
And then she heard the noises behind her. Feet shuffling across stone, whispers, the soft crackles of Sentinels. They may well be terrified, but that could only make them even more dangerous than before.
“It's fooled you,” she said. “And the Sentinels are coming.”
“Then you can't go back.” Ramus held out his hand. “Come with me.”
Nomi took a few more painful steps forward until she and Ramus were almost in touching distance. He lowered his hand but smiled, his offer standing.
“Out there?” she said. She looked over his shoulder, across the surface of the lake, past steam cones and stone pipes, and things rippling the surface. “Out there to that?�
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“There's nowhere else to go.”
“Why are you asking me? One whisper and you could turn me to stone.”
Ramus frowned again as if listening to voices she could not hear. “What we did to each other was in another world.”
The echoes of the Sentinels' approach passed them and muttered around the great cavern.
Nomi dropped the knife and held out her hand.
THEY WOULD DROWN before they reached the island, or the things breaking the water's surface would kill them, or the Sentinels would arrive and take them down before they had a chance to move. Ramus had those words, but perhaps he would be too scared to use them in here, too fearful that the cavern's acoustics would distort them into something else, over which he had no control. He seemed alternately fearful and ecstatic, and Nomi could not help feeling that he was now much more than he had ever been.
The dying Voyager walked around the edge of the cavern, climbing over fallen rocks, leaping dark crevasses, ducking beneath an overhanging gallery of stalactites whose ends looked unnaturally sharp in the weak light. The moss grew thick around the shores of the lake, exuding a low illumination and providing a soft carpet on which they could walk.
Nomi's leg screamed with every step, and she bit her lip to stop from crying out. Blood was already drying into a stiff scab across the side of her head and cheek, and every time she worked her jaw she felt the wound reopen and fresh blood flowing. I'm badly hurt, she thought, but it was a vague idea, as though this too mattered only in another world.
Nomi looked to her left at the island and the building that stood there. It seemed incongruous down here, its square edges the only unnatural things in sight. How do we get out there? she thought.
She was about to ask Ramus that same question when she heard the Sentinels arrive.
They emerged from the mouth of the tunnel and started hooting mournfully at the sight of the island. They pressed themselves against the wall of the cavern, as though trying to force themselves back through the stone, and for a moment they looked nowhere else. The enormity of what they were seeing seemed to steal their purpose.
Nomi was looking at one particular Sentinel, when it turned its head and stared at her. Its mouth fell open, its long arm rose and it bellowed in rage.
“This way,” Ramus said. He walked directly toward the water.
“They're coming,” Nomi said.
“They won't follow.” Ramus stepped out into the lake. Ripples spread from his feet, slow and shallow as though the water were something thicker. He walked out several more steps and did not sink.
“How are you doing that?” Nomi asked, aghast. What magic is this? What curse?
“Follow me,” Ramus said. “I know the way.”
The Sentinels were scampering around the edge of the cavern now, leaping over stones she and Ramus had climbed, loping across beds of luminous moss and throwing sparks behind. She had no choice.
Stepping out onto the water, Nomi prepared for the plunge. She knew that something had him—this was not the Ramus she knew, not really—and there was a potential about this place that seemed to seed itself in the air she breathed. It may well carry him, but it would send her down.
She did not sink. Her foot met something solid, and though she felt the coolness of subterranean water seeping into her worn boots, she also felt safe. She looked down and followed Ramus's footsteps, aiming for the centers of the rippling traces he had left behind. Even now, the splashes were fading. She hurried to catch up, trying to ignore the pain, because he strode quickly, never once doubting where his next step would take him.
The stepping stones were as black as the water around and above them. There was no way to see them without already knowing they were there. Nomi paused for a beat and glanced back, and already all traces of their passing had rippled away to smoothness.
The Sentinels were almost level with her now, twenty steps away but separated by waters unknown.
This is where they follow, she thought. They'll try for us, they have to, and some will find the way.
The first Sentinel stepped out and sank up to its knee. It howled and withdrew, shaking water from its leg, and another shoved past it and tried again. This one found the first two stones before slipping and splashing heavily into the lake, arms flailing and bubbles rising as its head went under.
A shape rose and submerged, and when the Sentinel surfaced it was screeching, holding up its arm to display its chewed hand.
Nomi turned back to Ramus and had to hurry, just able to follow his steps before the waters smoothed over. She caught up with him, keeping pace for a while before looking back. The Sentinels were still on the shore, the stricken one nursing its gnawed hand, the others striding back and forth but not actually touching the water.
“They won't come,” Ramus said.
“They will.” She thought of everything Sordon had told her, all his guilt wrapped up in the Sentinels' pure, perpetual purpose. “All they know is keeping this thing down.”
Ramus paused and looked back at her, and his eyes were sparkling, shimmering like reflections in water. “We're almost there,” he whispered.
The building was close now, not more than twenty steps away, and it seemed larger than it had appeared from the shore. The wall facing them was adorned with intricate symbols and lettering, and Nomi guessed the others were the same, and perhaps the roof as well. She could feel a steady vibration in the air, and sometimes the structure's walls seemed blurred as if it were moving, though the water lapping gently at the island's shore seemed undisturbed.
“There's something wrong,” Nomi said, not quite sure how to explain what she felt.
“It's amazing!” Ramus said. “This is a treasure. Everything we've ever lived for, Nomi!” The Sentinels roared behind them. They were trying to cross the stepping stones again, but now they were moving in pairs. Every time one of them fell into the water, the one following behind would continue, and another would leave the shore and hurry with uncanny precision across the stones they had already passed. At this rate, Nomi knew they would be on them soon . . . but Ramus seemed unconcerned.
“What do you know?” she asked.
“I know it's here, inside, a Sleeping God. Doesn't that amaze you?”
“It terrifies me. It's fallen, Ramus, and—”
“How can you truly know that?” he snapped, but his eyes betrayed him.
“You know that,” she said. “You've known all along.”
Ramus hissed and shook his head, taking four more steps and then stepping onto the island.
“We have no idea what's going to happen!” Nomi shouted. “We're just people, playing with gods!” She hurried after him, ignoring every instinct that screamed at her to turn around and flee. She was a Voyager, and with that came responsibilities she could never shirk.
When she reached Ramus, she grabbed his arm, and he turned and punched her in the face.
Nomi gasped and staggered back, but did not fall. Her vision blurred. The tears were not only from the pain.
“You never had any sense of greatness,” Ramus said. “I always sought . . .” He shook his head and waved a hand at her. “Time moves on.” He crossed the few steps to the building's wall and pressed himself to the cool stone.
Something thumped through the cavern. It was as if the surface of the lake had been used as a great drum, and its impact echoed from the walls. The Sentinels fell silent for a beat and then hooted louder, most of them advancing, a couple falling from the stepping stones and trying to swim for shore. One of them made it. The other was taken down—a brief, frothy thrashing the only sign of its demise.
Nomi darted forward and grabbed Ramus's knife, drawing it smoothly and stepping back. It felt much heavier than it should, as though it carried the fates of worlds along its blade's keen edge. She held it by her side, the thought of threatening Ramus with it ridiculous. Yet this moment stretched on—Ramus pressed against the building, Sentinels clacking as they came closer acr
oss the lake, the air beating, throbbing—and Nomi knew that it had to be broken somehow.
“NOMI,” RAMUS SAID. He closed his eyes. Next time he spoke, it was barely a whisper. “It's alive.”
He turned his head, keeping contact with the stone. It was not as cool as it should have been.
Nomi had taken his knife and now held it down against her leg. Blood dripped from her wounded temple, and from where he had struck her lip. She favored her left leg. She looked terrified and determined, and she had no idea what they had found.
“It's just beyond this wall,” he said. “Living. Trapped, but alive.” It was there in his mind, larger than ever and striving for some sort of release.
“It's not for the likes of us,” Nomi said.
“ ‘The likes of us’? You put us together, Nomi.”
“Of course.” She was staring at him unwaveringly, as though seeing the building he was pressed against would change her mind. “We're both Voyagers, and both Noreelans.”
“Both murderers?”
Nomi nodded. There was not even any hesitation, and that surprised Ramus.
“This is beyond such pettiness,” he said. He relinquished contact with the wall and started walking toward the building's corner. He trailed his right hand along the stone, feeling the dips and ridges of ancient carvings and inscriptions that he would never know. Whether they had been placed here as celebration or warning, he no longer cared. Time moved on, death racing birth, and sometimes a change was required.
“Ramus!”
He spun around, expecting to see Nomi coming at him with the knife. But she had her back to him now, knife held out toward the Sentinel that had just leapt from the final stepping stone and onto the shore.
