by Tim Lebbon
Standing beside the table, the wanderer seemed taller than ever. The sun cast his shadow across Nomi's face, and she wondered what it would be like to live in shadow forever. “I'll be back at noon,” he said. But he seemed to find it difficult to leave the pages behind.
“You can trust us,” Ramus said.
“It's not about trust,” Ten said. “I've had those with me for a long time.”
“We'll look after them,” Nomi said. She smiled her most charming smile, and the wanderer was looking at her as he walked away, not at what he had left behind.
Savi came to their table when he had left, and Nomi asked for some water and a bowl of river cherries. She felt like a treat.
“So what do you think?” she asked at last.
Ramus sat back in his chair, hands clasped in front of his face, eyes never moving from the parchment. His stubble was three days old, and Nomi could see the dirt beneath his fingernails. She knew the signs. He needed to go out again.
“How can we ignore this, Ramus?” she said passionately.
“It could be a hoax.” And there it was, his pissing cynicism, coming to the fore. He once told her something his mother had told him: Everything is a lie until proven. She hated that attitude, yet it gave him the endlessly inquisitive, questing mind that she so lacked.
“It's no hoax, Ramus. Look closer. You're a Voyager, and so am I. We have our differences, I know. But can't you see what this could be? The biggest find since Sordon Perlenni first went out! This could mean . . .” She swept her hand across the surface of the top parchment, wondering whose hand had hovered there to draw those images and symbols, and what it had looked like. “This could mean a whole new race of Noreelans.”
“On top of the Divide?”
“Yes. And more, Ramus.” She pointed at the bottom corner of the second parchment, and at the curled thing, sleeping like an infant in its mother's womb. She'd already seen him eyeing the image and looking away again, terrified and excited. Her voice was a whisper. “You know what that is.”
He looked at her, then back to the parchments. He stood quickly, his chair squealing back across the deck as he snatched them up. “I have to examine these.”
“Ramus—”
“Why did you come to me?” he said, glaring at her.
Nomi could only be honest. “You're the most brilliant person I know.”
Ramus dipped his head, acknowledging the fact rather than accepting the praise. “Then let me take these to the library. I'll meet you back here a half before noon.”
Nomi watched him leave, the parchment rolled and hidden beneath his jacket. For a moment she wanted to call him back, offer to go with him. But books were Ramus's domain.
NOMI HYDEN WALKED through the waterside market, trying to curb her excitement and think about all the arrangements she must make.
While Ramus examined the pages, she needed to put a voyage together.
Walking toward her home, unconsciously taking the quieter route so that she could think, the plan formed itself in her mind like a map. Naru May's was at the beginning, and at the end—two miles uphill to the south—was her home. Between those two points, other vital destinations began to take shape.
Nomi always thought this way—images, pictures, visions of what was to come. It came of being a dreamer, she supposed, but it was also a product of her mapmaking mind. A good map could light the way for even the most troubled soul. And a great map could change the lie of the land. Miss a troublesome street here, a run-down hovel there, and you altered the nature of the place you were mapping. Districts can be moved by a mapmaker; not physically, but in the minds of all those who read their work. She could toy with people's perception of places, names and geographies, or she could make them see straight. Mostly she had no need for obfuscation, but sometimes having the talent could help.
She guessed she had gained this furtive approach to map-drawingon her first voyage to Ventgoria. There, nothing stayed the same. A path leading to this place one year would lead somewhere else the following year. A hill would become a marshy plain in the space of a long wet winter, and ponds and pools drained and refilled with the frequency of leaves falling and fresh buds forming. It was a land that defied mapping, and those locals who would deign to talk to her blamed the steam dragons. They said the dragons came when the steam vents opened, snaked their way through the land just below the surface, straightening serpentine rivers and forcing hills of mud and stone from the sodden ground. And then they vented their steam and molded the land into its new shape.
Nomi had smiled at the stories, but she spent most of her first voyage there losing herself in the Ventgorian wilds. Even when she found a settlement, it might not be there the next day. The only things that seemed defined and fixed were the vast aerial grape plants, mile upon mile of vines networked between the bole trees. The sun was hot and constant, the moisture from below billowing in occasional steam clouds, and she had found the best crop for the perfect wine.
The dependable plants had pinned her to the land, and their produce provided the wealth she now enjoyed.
If she walked fast and made her deals quickly, she would be back at Naru May's by noon, bathed, changed and ready to plan the voyage of her life.
With Ramus. That was exciting, but it troubled her as well. They had a complex history. So much time together, so many secrets. If she'd ever had siblings to compare him to, she might have thought of him as a brother.
Yet this was bigger than them. What Ten had brought would provide riches, glory, knowledge and danger enough for them both. And for the first time, the thought of what they were facing frightened rather than thrilled her.
BEKO HAVISON LIVED in the basement rooms beneath a tavern. He was a Serian—a soldier from Mancoseria, ready to sell his experience to the Guild of Voyagers—and he had accompanied Nomi on her second voyage to Ventgoria. It had been a relatively trouble-free journey, other than her sickness, but she had always seen the potential in him. They had talked a lot on that trip, and he had professed a love of free poetry, but the raw strength that had seen him through five voyages was obvious. He could talk endlessly about moonlight touching the stark branches of a lightning tree, but he could never hide his scars.
The tavern was still boarded up, and a drunk lay unconscious on its steps. Nomi thought of waking him and telling him that dawn had come and gone, but he did not look like the sort of man who'd take kindly to being surprised. There was a short curved knife in his belt, the blade keen, bone handle smooth and darkened from use.
She stepped over his splayed legs, cringing at the smell, and walked down the short flight of stone steps to the basement door.
It was open, and Beko Havison was smiling at her.
“Beko! You surprised me.”
“You come to visit, and I surprise you?”
“How by all the gods do you live here?” she asked. The drunk growled something indecipherable in his sleep.
“Nobody looks below a tavern,” Beko said. “Makes me anonymous. Besides, it's not so bad here. A rough place, but the food is to die for.” He held out his hands and Nomi grasped them. “Good travels.”
Nomi grinned. “I hope so.”
“Ah!” Beko said. “Work. Then welcome to my humble abode.”
THE BASEMENT CONSISTED of one huge room with a curtained bathroom in one corner and a large bed along one side. With the front door closed, the only outside light came from three slits just below ceiling level—one at the front and two at the rear. They were glazed with thick, misted glass, and dust on the outside further reduced the light. Candles flickered around the room, casting flickering shadows. The ceiling beams were low enough that the warrior had to duck in places.
All available wall space was taken up by weaponry.
“Very homely,” Nomi said.
“I have to store the tools of my trade somewhere.”
There were a dozen swords of varying shapes, lengths and designs. Several bows hung on the walls, the smalle
st the length of Nomi's arm, the longest as tall as the room. A collection of intricately designed quivers lay on the table along the room's rear wall, and there were tall wooden pots from which the feathered ends of hundreds of arrows protruded like deadly flowers. Knives made from metal, bone and hardwood hung on strings, along with an assortment of other cutting, crushing or hacking weapons. She could also see the crossbow with which Beko had hunted fowl and wild pigs in Ventgoria.
Nomi shivered. She could not help wondering which blades, arrows and axes had killed people.
She knew that Beko had killed. They had talked about it. Hers was the most trouble-free voyage he had been on, he told her. The one previous to that had been with a woman named Ghina Bleed, one of the most senior Voyagers of the Guild. They had gone south as far as the great lake south of the Pavissia Steppes and whilst mapping the lake's shores, they had been besieged by a large, organized band of marauders, coveting the Voyagers' horses, equipment and weapons. The fight had lasted for eight days, and when the marauders finally fled, they left a hundred dead behind. How many of those Beko was responsible for he had not said, but Nomi did not believe that numbers really mattered. The voyage lost only four members, and it had become infamous in Guild history.
“Drink?” Beko asked.
Nomi's head was still spinning from her unaccustomed intake of morning cydrax. She shook her head and watched Beko pour himself some root wine from a tall clay bottle.
“Please, sit,” the soldier said. He sat in one of the chairs around a low table and Nomi sat opposite, relaxing. “Remember I promised I would show you this?” He indicated the table, shifting aside a plate dirtied with leftover food.
“Your trial carving!” Nomi leaned forward and gasped when she saw the table's hardwood surface. “Is that your seethe-gator?”
Beko nodded.
She touched the carving, and for an instant Nomi imagined the rough wooden edges to be seethe-gator teeth. She moved her fingertips across the deadly creature's image—its spines and serrated teeth, those long, hooked limbs that made it so deadly—and then she noticed the flicker of a figure beside it. It was so expertly carved that the candlelight revealed only its shadow: ridges and knots cut here and there to form the insubstantial image of a man. The seethe-gator was twice his size.
“I took it with nineteen throwing knives, fifteen arrows, six crossbow bolts . . . and a sword for its head.”
Nomi shook her head in awe. “How can you and your people live in such a place?”
“My people have lived there forever,” he said. “Mancoseria is our home, and the seethe-gators have always been there too. Yet for me . . . I don't live there anymore. I live here.”
“Of course,” Nomi said. “I'm sorry. I . . .”
“It was a long time ago. And that was the creature that took her. I killed it. I've had my revenge. It's not every Serian who gets to kill such a seethe-gator for their trial.”
Nomi sat back, amazed once again at the soldier's history. So much death, such harsh times. She tried to imagine Beko fighting the terrifying animal carved in the tabletop.
“I'd like to offer you work,” she said at last.
“But not Guild work.” Beko rested his feet on the trial table, heels crossed atop the seethe-gator's head.
“No, not Guild. There are . . . reasons. And it would be myself and a friend.”
“Ramus Rheel?”
“Yes.” She'd forgotten how sharp Beko could be.
He nodded slowly, looking at her over the top of his mug.
What did I tell him about Ramus and me? She could not remember. They had spent many nights eating around campfires, and their discovery of Ventgorian airbacco had turned much of the voyage hazy and indistinct.
“He's a remarkable man,” she said. “He reads, and not just the modern Noreelan languages. He's read old books too. He knows so much, and for this voyage—”
“So it is a voyage. You were being a bit evasive, Nomi. It's not like you.”
“True. But with this one, there's nothing defined or known.”
Beko leaned forward and placed his mug on the table. “The very soul of voyaging.”
“Are you interested?”
“I'm intrigued,” he said. “Which for me amounts to the same thing. I've been here for almost half a year without a voyage. And the last one was with that fool Geary, a tiresome stomp down the Western Shores. We found nothing but sand and dead fish.”
“I'll want you as captain.”
He frowned. “How many more Serians do you need?”
“Can you find five more who'll do private work?”
He nodded. “Of course. But what do I tell them?”
“Nothing for now.” She looked down at Beko's trial table again, and the shifting candlelight made the seethe-gator move. “Only promise them the voyage of a lifetime.”
“Well,” Beko said, picking up his mug and drinking more wine. “I'm more intrigued than ever.”
Nomi caught him staring at her when she looked up.
“This needs to be kept quiet, Beko. I mean it.”
“I'm sure.” He smiled. “But as captain, I think I deserve something to spur me on. Don't you?”
“Something . . . ?” Not for the first time, Nomi felt uncomfortable in Beko's presence. He was a big man, intimidating when he wanted to be, yet gentle and caring when the mood took him. A man of contradictions; a lover of poetry who slept in an armory.
“Tell me where we're going, Nomi.”
“That's your price?”
“I won't breathe a word.”
Nomi relaxed back into the chair. “We're going to the Great Divide.”
The soldier's face did not change, but his eyes grew dark.
“The voyage of voyages, Beko! Perhaps the one to end them all.”
“What's down there?”
She looked away. “We don't know yet.”
“You're lying.”
“I don't lie, Beko. We don't know what's down there. That's why we're going.”
He stood and walked behind her, a heavy shadow in the shady basement. In the tavern above them a piece of furniture scraped across the floor. Someone muttered, and somebody else laughed. “Opening time soon,” Beko said. “More drinking in the day, singing in the evening and fighting in the night. More wine dripping between the floorboards. More puking drunks.”
“We could be drinking around a campfire two nights from now.”
“I'll come, of course,” Beko said. “I made up my mind when I showed you my trial table.”
“You did?”
“I saw the excitement in your eyes. You don't hide much.”
She sighed with relief, but said, “You haven't even asked about pay.”
Beko turned. He was holding a round stone, and he drew the blade of a short knife across its surface. “I know that Ventgorian fruit has made you rich. Come back this evening and I'll give you a price.”
Nomi nodded, and jumped when something thudded onto the floor above them.
Beko rolled his eyes. “Dragging out last night's drunks to make room for tonight's.”
“Yes. Very homely.” Nomi went to the door and opened it to the smell of vomit.
“Nomi,” Beko said.
She turned around, looking back into the cavern of a room.
“Thank you for asking me.”
“Who else would I go to?” Then she shut the door, climbed the steps to the street and went to find a runner.
Chapter 2
RAMUS SAT JUST inside the library entrance, holding his head and hissing as the pain receded. His vision and hearing throbbed with each heartbeat, but the nausea was passing.
Not now, he thought. Not while I need all my wits about me. He grasped the rolled parchment pages in his left hand, and they too seemed to pulse with each beat of his heart.
It had started as a headache three years ago, one that lasted four days and seemed to reach out to every nerve in his body, drowning him in a pain he had never imagi
ned before. He had thrashed and cried in his bed, unable to move or go for help. Even back then, Nomi was the only person who ever paid him a visit, and then not frequently, but she had been away on her second voyage to Ventgoria. He had suffered alone, and recovered without telling anyone what had happened. One of those things, he had thought at the time. A sickness in the air, or bad food from one of the street vendors. Looking back, he now considered it the period of impregnation, because every time an attack came he had visions: strange, obscure, sometimes disturbing, other times quite mundane.
Ramus stood, resting his right hand against the wall for support. He gasped in a few deep breaths, trying to clear his head, and smelled the unmistakable must of age. This library was his home away from home. He stood still for a few moments, feeling the last of the pain drift away, and then he reached for the library's inner door.
THERE WERE THREE other people at the tables immediately inside. One of them worked for the Guild, and she nodded at Ramus. He recognized the other two by sight, although he did not know their names. Scholars, probably, working for themselves or one of the local Chieftains. They scratched at rough paper on the tables before them, taking notes from a book here, a parchment there, and the frown of confusion on their faces was ever-present.
They don't know how to look, Ramus thought. They may think they can understand language, but everything that matters is between the lines.
The library was contained in a large, low hall behind a shop selling furniture, paintings and exotic tapestries from Pengulfin Landing. It had been a storage building many years before, and the ranks of rough timber shelves were still there, freestanding down the middle of the hall and fixed to all four walls. When one of the old Chieftains of Long Marrakash had decided to gather as many books, scrolls and parchments together as they could, the shop's owner had sold the hall for a good price. The books and other recordings had been gathered and moved in, and since then this had been a virtual shrine to all those who strove to know the past. It was also a place of much frustration, as few books were written in exactly the same language. Most utilized some common Noreelan lettering, but each writer had adapted the language to their own aims, using symbolism, unique dialects, graphical representations, imagery known and unknown and preferences that often amounted to personal code.