by Tim Lebbon
Sometimes he sat and wrote in his journal, aided by volcanic glows and arcing streams of lightning. He tried to tell everything that had happened. He drew pictures. But he knew that reading these words in the stark light of day would paint them a very different color.
It was a place filled with spirits. He saw them from the corner of his eye, whispering things, trying to form words that would not work. When he looked he saw only shadows or veils of steam, but he knew the spirits dwelled within. They watched him pass and they were many, and he sensed age emanating from them, as though each fleeting wraith was a lost memory of the fallen thing he had awoken, cast adrift and floating in search of somewhere else.
He did not know their language, but he was confident that they would make a home of this new place.
RAMUS WENT DOWN, and every step should have been his last. The land was in turmoil and no natural features remained steady for long. Yet he missed landslides, dodged eruptions and found his way around new ravines and pits that seemed bottomless.
All the way down he mourned Nomi and tried to understand what they had done. And he wondered whether there would be a Noreela for him to return to.
RAMUS RHEEL, VOYAGER, should have died. Yet he lived. After four days walking, climbing and descending into pits and ravines that should have been his grave, the land about him began to level out. Dust clogged the air and he coughed up thick wads of black phlegm. Tiredness beat him down but he ignored it, knowing that if he did stop to rest, perhaps death would catch up with him. For a man who had lived life for so long knowing that he was dying, his determination to survive was a fire in his chest.
Sometimes, he dwelled on why the God wished him to survive, for it was clear to Ramus that was the case. The risen thing had blessed him to escape the changed and still-changing landscape of the Great Divide. But his was not the place to question a God.
After another day's travel, Ramus suddenly realized that there was dusty grass beneath his feet. The sun was still blocked out, but he could see its smudge above him, tracking him through the clouds of steam and smoke, as if eager to shine upon him once more. He walked on, voyaging across Noreela, and when he found one of the standing stones he had used to navigate south, he sat down at last. When sleep claimed him, he had the first of Nomi's nightmares.
SHE IS IN a world she cannot see. She is awake in a nightmare, and though she has been screaming, no one listens; no one cares. The Fallen God carries her tight against its chest as it strides through a land without edges or definition, a place where even the sky and ground are blurred into one. It's here to make a whole new world, Nomi thinks, and she does not want to be a part of it. The blurring passes by as the God moves ever southward, leaving behind Noreela and whatever has become of the Great Divide, heading into lands beyond comprehension or understanding. Sometimes there is a vague, terrible sense of pursuit, and for a while Kang Kang moves faster. And she wonders whether the God can see what she cannot, or if it is only imagining what will be.
She cries herself to sleep and cries herself awake, because she carries a new life in her womb. She knows that her own future is shattered. But perhaps whatever she gives birth to will be remade as a part of this new, unknown place.
There is no comfort in that at all. So Nomi screams, cries herself to sleep, cries herself awake.
RAMUS COULD NOT travel that next day. His exertions caught up with him and he sheltered against the standing stone, putting it between him and what had become, and was still becoming, of the Great Divide. The ground still shook and cracked, the air stank of volcanic gases and dust, but Ramus sat there for the whole day and tried not to see Nomi's dreams again. He had not wanted them before, and he wanted them even less now and he felt more cursed than ever because he was convinced the God had taken his illness away.
Later that day, the first travelers came by. They were wanderers, come this far south to feed their natural curiosity. They eyed Ramus suspiciously for a while, and then the leader of the small group drew his sword and came forward. But when he saw Ramus's bloody eye, he put away his weapon and squatted by his side.
“What happened?” he asked in broken Noreelan, nodding toward the south.
And Ramus knew at last why the Fallen God had spared him. Because like any corrupt thing, it had its pride, and its ego, and it wanted its story told.
Ramus closed his eyes and fought hard against the words balancing on his lips.
“Kang Kang,” he spat, and then he groaned and thought, I will not tell your tale. There might be a thousand more “what happened”s', but I will not tell.
“Kang Kang?”
Ramus's eyes went wide and he sat up straight. “I will not tell your story!”
The wanderer stood and backed away, evidently less certain now of his appraisal of this man.
“I will not!” Ramus shouted again. The Fallen God could become infamous, or it could fade away in time.
“Kang Kang!” one of the wanderer's children shouted, and she and her little brother started singing that terrible name, back and forth as though they could make their own stories, given time.
“No!” Ramus roared. If I tell it they will follow, they will search, and however far it has gone, one day it might be found again. And he whispered, “I am the greatest Voyager.”
He pulled the small knife he had kept, grasped his tongue in his left hand and with one hard slice took it off.
_____
THE WANDERERS WERE kinder than most. They did their best to stop the bleeding and tend him as a fever took hold. It burned through him, scorching his skin and branding his mind with memories he did not want. When he woke from the fever there was a weight in his head once again, a familiar pain growing hotter and heavier, and his right eye was bleeding. He nodded his thanks and went on his way.
The wanderers watched him go. Ramus knew that they wondered about the story he could not tell.
He passed the standing stones and entered the forests, and here he set a fire. It was easy to burn his journal; it was incomplete and inaccurate, and as he tore out the pages and fed them to the flames he smiled at some of the foolishness written there. The parchment pages, old and new, should be next . . . but he held them in his hands for a while.
These were the last of their kind. Everything else was gone, swallowed in the turmoil of the fallen Great Divide. Blood and saliva dripped from his ruined mouth onto the uppermost page, staining the image of the God that Ramus had always known was fallen, and he closed his eyes.
He dropped the parchment pages onto the fire. When he looked again the only part left was the drawing of the God, dampened by his blood and spit. But soon even that burned away to nothing.
AT NIGHT, NOMI’S nightmares came. And during the days when he walked north, away from the Great Divide and Kang Kang, away from Nomi, Ramus held on to the hope that they would not last forever.
About the Author
TIM LEBBON lives in South Wales with his wife and two children. His books include the British Fantasy Award–winning Dusk and its sequel, Dawn, Mind the Gap (cowritten with Christopher Golden), Berserk, The Everlasting, Hellboy: Unnatural Selection, 30 Days of Night, and Desolation. Future books include a new novel set in Noreela, more Novels of the Hidden Cities (with Christopher Golden), a collection from Cemetery Dance Publications, and further books with Night Shade Books, Necessary Evil Press, and Humdrumming, among others. He has won three British Fantasy Awards, a Bram Stoker Award, a Shocker, and a Tombstone Award, and has been a finalist for International Horror Guild and World Fantasy awards. His novella White is soon to be a major Hollywood movie, and several of his other novels and novellas are currently in development in the United States and the UK. Find out more about Tim at his websites: www.timlebbon.net and www.noreela.com.
ALSO BY TIM LEBBON
NOVELS
Dawn
Dusk
Hellboy: Unnatural Selection
Mesmer
The Nature of Balance
Hush (with
Gavin Williams)
Face
Until She Sleeps
Desolation
Berserk
30 Days of Night
Mind the Gap (with Christopher Golden)
The Everlasting
NOVELLAS
White
Naming of Parts
Changing of Faces
Exorcising Angels (with Simon Clark)
Dead Man's Hand
Pieces of Hate
A Whisper of Southern Lights
COLLECTIONS
Faith in the Flesh
As the Sun Goes Down
White and Other Tales of Ruin
Fears Unnamed
Last Exit for the Lost
If you enjoyed FALLEN, be sure not to miss
THE ISLAND
by
TIM LEBBON
Another riveting novel of Noreela, coming in 2009 from Bantam Spectra.
Here's a special preview.
THE ISLAND
On sale in 2009
WHEN KEL BOON entered the tavern, a score of faces turned his way. Such was the atmosphere in a small fishing village. Even on a day like today—when the skies were opening, the sea was battering them and the rest of the world felt very far away—Pavmouth Breaks's residents feared the stranger.
Kel smiled and received a dozen smiles in return, but some of the older men and women turned away. He'd been here for only five years, and it would take a lot longer than that for him to become one of them.
“Kel!” Trakis called from a smoky corner. The big man stood and waved his arms, and Mella—sitting beside him smoking a huge pipe—nudged him in the ribs.
Kel looked around quickly but saw no sign of Namior. Maybe those witches had held her back.
“You look like a drowned furbat!” Trakis said. As Kel drew closer, his friend's face grew stern. “You need ale.” He strode toward the bar.
“Hello, gorgeous,” Mella said. “You're dripping on the table.”
Kel stepped back and shed his coat, hanging it on a hook set into one of the tavern's many rough timber columns. It was one of the oldest places in Pavmouth Breaks, so the landlord Neak said, and he also claimed it was home to the most wraiths. Kel always smiled when he heard Neak telling that to a visiting fisherman or a newcomer to the village: Most haunted place in Noreela! Kel had visited a dozen places in Noreela City itself that also laid claim to that dubious title.
“No Namior?” Mella asked.
“She's coming. I spoke to her earlier.”
“Storm from the deepest Black,” Mella said, taking another draw on her pipe. She gasped, then exhaled a stream of pure green smoke. “You can almost hear the wraiths screaming in the wind.”
“No wraiths out there,” Kel said, perhaps a little too harshly. “It's just weather.”
Mella nodded and stared at him a little too long. Out of everyone, she was the most suspicious of his past. Sometimes, he thought she could see deeper than he knew.
Trakis returned and lowered a tray of drinks carefully to the table. Four jugs of Neak's Wanderlust ale and a dark bottle of wine. “I'm splashing out,” Trakis said. “Tonight it's us against the world.”
“A militiaman who affords Ventgorian wine,” Mella said admiringly. “You must be corrupt.”
“Eat sheebok shit, fisherwoman.”
Kel raised his jug and offered his squabbling friends a toast. “To us,” he said, “against the world.” He drank, closing his eyes as the initial bitter taste changed into something sweet and wonderful. Neak swore that he brewed naturally, without the help of magic or machines, and Kel believed him. Nothing tasting this good could be so false.
The tavern door opened, conversation stopped, and Namior Feeron entered, slamming the door behind her and shaking the rain from her long hair. She spied Kel immediately and smiled. As she came across to them, she swapped greetings with most of the tavern's patrons. Kel looked away. Seeing how well she knew this place sometimes stung him, because he also knew how much she wanted to get away. She longed for travel, exploration and adventure. She wanted to see Noreela City, Pengulfin Heights, the islands of The Spine that curved out from the north of Noreela, and she had even suggested a journey south far enough to see dangerous Kang Kang mountains. But every time she mentioned this, Kel Boon said no. He was staying here. I've had adventure, he would say, and however much she pressed, he would tell her no more. And that was the dark space between them, a gap which seemed, at present, unfordable.
“The harbor's mad,” Namior said, even before taking a seat. “Boats are crashing about, and some of those waves are breaking over the mole.”
“There's been worse,” Mella said. She had been a fisherwoman for almost eighteen years. She'd been involved in three wrecks, seen two friends drowned and one taken by sea creatures, and nothing seemed to disturb her anymore. At almost forty—just younger than Kel, and two decades older than Namior—Mella had lived enough to fill many lives. We'd have such tales to tell each other, Kel sometimes thought, but he could never speak about his past. Not if he wanted to remain in Pavmouth Breaks.
Not if he wanted to stay alive.
“And what do you say, young witch?” Trakis asked Namior.
Namior's eyes darkened for a beat, then she smiled and it lit up her face. “My mother says there's to be a waterspout just along the coast.” She glanced at Kel, the smile slipping so slightly that he thought he was the only one who noticed.
“I'll drink to that!” Trakis said. He raised his mug, and the rest of them joined him in toasting the storm.
Namior sat on a bench close to Kel, and it only took one mug of ale before she pressed herself up against him. He slung his right arm loosely around her shoulders, his hand hanging down and touching her breast, and drank with his left. She looked at him frequently, her ale-tainted laughter a welcome addition to the tavern's underlying noise. Kel drank slowly. He had never enjoyed the sensation of being drunk, and the loss of control it brought on, but he always enjoyed watching Trakis and Mella drink together, and tonight both of them were truly on form. Conversations turned to bickering, bickering to full-blown arguments, and then they would hug each other, laughing and swearing as they swore undying friendship. Kel supposed this was a tavern filled with such people, but these were special because they were his friends.
The door opened occasionally, letting a sample of the storm inside to blow out candles and spatter the timber floor with rain. Whoever stumbled in was subject to the tavern's appraisal, and more often than not they would have stories of how the storm was progressing. Waves fifteen steps high, they said, battering the mole and smashing boats against the harbor wall. Rain so heavy that some of the paths up to Drakeman's Hill had turned into impassable torrents. “Looks like I'm staying with you tonight,” Kel said at this, and Namior's hand squeezed his thigh, remaining there afterward.
The evening turned to night, though daylight had been stolen long ago by the angry clouds. Lightning flashed at the tavern's windows, followed soon after by the rumbles of thunder.
Kel knew that Namior saw this as an adventure. Whatever had troubled her earlier had been melted away by the Wanderlust ale and fine Ventgorian wine, and her smile was a constant, her laughter a welcome song.
But with each flash of lightning, as though the space between blinks was another world, Kel was taken back to that night in Noreela City.
THE THUD SHATTERED one of the Dog's Eyes's windows, cracked the floorboards, shook the door in its frame, sent several wine bottles tumbling from the shelf behind the bar to smash at Neak's feet and sent a heavy shock wave up through Kel's feet and spine.
The rain and wind did not lessen—with the smashed window, the noise from outside increased—but for a few beats after the thud, the interior of the tavern was almost silent. It felt as though the ground itself had moved.
“What in the Black was that?” a voice said. The thought spoken, a ripple of surprise ran around the tavern, and a beat later most people were on thei
r feet and heading for the door.
“That wasn't wind,” Namior said.
“And no wave, either,” Mella said.
Trakis raised a mug and drained it of ale, then he stood and nodded at the door. “Shall we?”
Kel felt a sudden chill of fear, a realization that nothing was safe and that his world—anyone's world—could be opened up and taken apart at any time. He had liked Pavmouth Breaks when he first arrived, and over the years he had grown to love it, but he always knew that safety and contentment were merely a thin veneer over the random cruelties of which nature was capable.
“Kel?” Namior said. She had remained close to him, and now he saw that strange look again, the one the others had not noticed before.
“What is it, Namior?” Mella said.
Namior looked at her two friends, then across at the broken window. Raindrops spat in. A dozen people had gone outside by now, but none of their voices were audible above the storm. “My mother and grandmothers . . . They were worried, that's all.”
“And you?” Kel asked.
She shrugged. “I'm still young. Felt nothing. But if they're worried . . .”
