by Tim Lebbon
It, he thinks. The Sleeping God.
But it is not him thinking this, it is Nomi. And the guilt of an old illness burns behind his face.
The nightmare vision changes quickly. The land darkens all across the horizon as something flows over it toward him. The skies remain the same color, ignorant of what is happening to the landscape they cover, and the flood closes in, resolving itself into people. Thousands, hundreds of thousands, perhaps a thousand times that, more people than have ever lived or will ever live on Noreela, and they are closing on him like an inexorable tide, unstoppable and determined, all carrying a fearsome burden of blame.
He wants to cry out but he has no voice. He looks down at his hands and they are not his own: soft, long-fingered, he has seen them painting shapes in the air many times before.
As his high-pitched scream begins, he sees the faces of the incoming hordes about to engulf him, and every face is his own.
LULAH WAS WITH him when he awoke. Her face blocked out the light. He thought she would be angry or concerned, but her expression was one of confusion.
Ramus closed his eyes again and mentally felt around for injuries. He'd been thrown from the horse, had not just fallen. He must have broken bones at least, and maybe there were injuries inside. To add to what I already have, he thought.
“Don't go back to sleep,” Lulah said.
I'm not, Ramus tried to say, but his mouth was dry and his tongue felt heavy and covered with grit. He shook his head instead and opened his eyes again.
Lulah held a water skin to his mouth and he drank, swilling it around his mouth.
“The horse?” he asked.
“Safe. It stopped as soon as you fell.”
“My head . . . The pain was too much.”
Lulah nodded, distracted. She was looking around Ramus, not just at his face.
“Are we safe?” he asked.
She nodded again, not meeting his gaze.
“How long have I been out?”
“Not long,” she said. “It's mid-afternoon. You were talking in your sleep.”
“What was I saying?”
Lulah looked at him then, fixing him with her one piercing eye. “I don't know,” she said. “I didn't understand.” She reached out and brushed his jacket, his throat and face. “You're covered with dust.”
Ramus sat up, Lulah pulling gently on one arm. They were in a gentle dip in the land, a stream running past nearby. It made a pleasing sound in the quiet afternoon. A few small birds frolicked in bushes across the stream from them, chirruping and jumping from branch to branch, scraping their beaks on the wood and pecking insects from the air. There was no sign that death and murder lay so close.
“Marauders?” Ramus asked.
“I went back to have another look while you were sleeping,” the Serian said. “Your voice . . . I didn't like it. It sounded like the words you spoke last night, from those pages you have. So I was pleased to leave you to your nightmares. I turned a couple of the bodies and found arrows crushed beneath them, and there was a spear hidden in undergrowth. Lots of hoofprints too. Marauders usually work on horseback.”
He looked down at himself and brushed more dust away. Some of it felt sharp, and he brought his hand close to examine it. “What's this?” he asked.
Lulah shrugged. “Must have blown in from somewhere.”
Ramus looked around, seeing only heather, grass and undergrowth spotted here and there.
“We should go,” she said. “If you're feeling up to it?”
Ramus nodded, though the pain in his forehead still made him nauseous. He fisted his hand, not sure that he had seen what he thought he'd seen.
They mounted up and Lulah rode thirty steps ahead, and when he was sure she was not looking Ramus opened his hand again. There, amongst the grit shaped like nothing, was a small gray fly. Gray, because it seemed to be made of stone. He crushed it between his fingertips and let it drift away on the breeze.
He wondered what Lulah had seen in the dust while he slept.
Chapter 11
NOMI WAS DOING her best, but the memory of those parchment pages was vaguer than ever. Her parchment was scored, scratched and scribbled with crossings-out. The more she tried to cast her mind back to her meetings with Ten, the more nebulous the images became.
Worse, she knew that Ramus would be laughing if he knew what she was going through. He was a constant critic of her stubborn refusal to read. If it's written down, he would say, it's written down forever. Her argument had been that a lie written is a lie that endures. She was much more trusting of verbal storytelling, histories passed down from father to son, mother to daughter. It was far more difficult to wipe out a tale in the telling than one in the writing.
Beko had noticed her distraction and commented upon it, but she had been riding alone for most of that day. She let her horse follow the others, stared into the distance, waiting for inspiration to strike but fearing that it was actually bleeding away.
And even if I did remember, she thought—the voice small, vicious and painfully honest—what would I do with that knowledge?
That barely mattered. Her desire to recollect those pages was partly for the voyage, but mainly down to the bare fact that Ramus had stolen them from her.
They would be useful. They must be. He had said that they were a mixture of writings, imagery and even maps, and she needed them. It was still a moon away, but the closer they came to the Great Divide, the more serious Ramus's theft would become.
She saw Beko fall back from the lead, waiting for her to draw level with him. She offered a smile and he nodded in return.
“Noon just came in from scouting ahead,” he said. “He's found evidence of marauder activity.”
“Volkain said there was none this close.”
“Volkain sits in his border post and listens to stories told to him by travelers and traders,” Beko said, his distaste evident. “We're our own eyes and ears now. And Noon saw the results of an attack.”
“What results?”
“Bodies. Not fresh. West of here, close to an old building.”
Nomi nodded and scanned the horizon, expecting to see dark shadows rolling in to overwhelm them at any second. The idea chilled her, as if touching on a forgotten nightmare.
“We'll move in closer formation,” Beko said. “Noon and Konrad will ride ahead and report back with anything troubling.” He looked up at the sun. “We'll make camp earlier tonight.”
“No!” Nomi said.
“Nomi, we can't rush on regardless.”
“We have to catch up with Ramus.”
Beko shook his head. “He's taken his own path in this.”
“You think he's right to do what he's done?” The suspicion had been burning at Nomi, a burrowing paranoia sinking from the blush of her embarrassment to the guilty core of her.
“Steal your parchments?” Beko said. “Or leave because of what you did to each other?”
“You have no idea about me and Ramus,” she said.
He nodded. “And I'm just a simple soldier. I don't need complications.”
But I need to talk to someone, Nomi thought of saying, trying to ignore Beko's sarcasm. But that would sound too much like begging. And she would not beg anything of Beko.
“We need those pages,” she said instead. “I've been trying to remember them since last night, but I can't. The more I try, the more unclear they become.”
“You said you can't read.”
“They contain more than words.”
Beko sighed. He looked away and Nomi examined his strong profile, appreciated the ease and grace of his movements on the horse. “Let's talk about it when we camp,” he said.
“You'll send someone?” she asked, surprised. She had been considering going after Ramus herself, but if Beko agreed to send the Serians after him . . .
“I said when we camp.”
“You could track him? You could follow?”
Beko only glared at Nomi this time, before u
rging his horse ahead to catch up with Rhiana. Noon and Konrad joined him at a signal, and beats later they galloped ahead together, disappearing into the landscape to scout their route.
Nomi rode alone. Behind her she heard Ramin and the packhorse keeping pace, and she felt his gaze on her back. And the guilt was there again, a burning conviction that the Serians thought her wrong rather than the wronged.
“WE’RE IN YOUR employ,” Beko said. His words broke the uncomfortable silence that had hung around them since they'd finished their meal. Rhiana was on guard somewhere beyond the fire's influence, but Nomi and the others sat close. Beko had insisted upon it. No slipping off between the trees, no wandering alone to gather thoughts. If there were marauders in the vicinity, he wanted everyone close. “If you request something of us, we'll carry it out if it's safe to do so.”
“Safe for you, or safe for the voyage?”
“Both.”
Nomi stared into the flames. She thought of the parchment page with the thick vertical line, and all she could recall was the side with no writing. She had convinced herself that this was not simply anger on her part, and that having those pages back was essential to the voyage.
“Could you track them?”
Beko sighed and turned to Noon.
“Some of the bodies I found had been recently disturbed,” Noon said. “Examined, not mutilated.”
“And you think it might have been them?” Nomi asked.
“I found two horse trails,” Noon said, and he shrugged.
Nomi nodded and looked back at the fire. She closed her eyes. “Beko, I'd like you to send two of your Serians after Ramus and Lulah. I need the parchment pages he stole from me. They're mine, and Ramus is involved simply because I decided this journey was too important for one Voyager alone. But this is my voyage.”
“And Ramus?” Beko asked.
“This is about the parchment, not about him and me.”
“He may fight,” Beko said. “But we won't fight Lulah. Serians never fight their own.”
“I'm not asking you to,” Nomi said.
Beko glanced at his people, then back to Nomi. “None of this feels good,” he said.
“None of it is good.” Nomi picked up a stick that had fallen from the fire and used it to stir the flames. Sparks rose and knots spat.
“I've never been on a voyage spoiled by the Voyagers,” Ramin said.
Anger surged through Nomi but receded just as quickly. She could not deny her guilt.
“Ramin, Konrad?” Beko said.
Konrad nodded. “I'm the best tracker here.”
“And the humblest,” Ramin said, laughing.
“Just telling the truth. I can track well. And you're probably the most persuasive. You can joke Ramus into submission.”
“I want your guarantee that he won't be hurt,” Nomi said.
“If you send us to get those pages, you accept the consequences,” Ramin said. The joking had gone from him now.
“I just don't—”
“What happens when he refuses to hand them over?” Konrad was on his feet, pacing back and forth before the fire.
“He's right,” Beko said. “You send us, Nomi, and we'll get what you want.”
It was a strange way of stating it, but Nomi heard the honesty behind Beko's remark. They would not fight their own, they had made that clear. She respected that completely. But no one was willing to say they would not fight Ramus.
If only he won't be a fool, Nomi thought. She bowed her head. “I need those pages.” The fire drew her attention again, and she was happy to see shapes in the glow. Around her, she heard the bustle of Konrad and Ramin checking their equipment before the light faded altogether.
THEY LEFT THE following morning. They all breakfasted together, and then Konrad and Ramin said their good-byes to Noon, Rhiana and Beko. It was a ritual that excluded Nomi, and she walked some way off across the plain while they clasped hands and touched one another's shoulders. They looked her way as they mounted up, and she raised her hand. They gave no sign that they had seen.
She watched the two Serians ride south. They carried everything they needed on their own horses—a pack animal would slow them down—and they urged them into a trot as soon as they left the camp. They had opened their weapon rolls and now looked like true soldiers, with swords, knives, bows, arrows, crossbows and bolts adorning straps across their chests and around their waists.
The moment they disappeared into the landscape Nomi felt an instant sense of dread. Days ago, at the start of their voyage, she had been excited to be out again. She had put the team together herself, paid for everything from her own pocket, and along with Ramus had been in complete control. Then everything had gone wrong, falling apart in such a short space of time that the voyage felt moons old already, not merely days. Control had become an illusion.
I'm trying to regain control, she thought. Take back what's mine. But however much she clung to that idea, it did not hold.
One group was now split into three. They were on the Pavissia Steppes, marauders had killed people only miles from here, Ramus was probably running as fast as he could for the south . . . and worst of all, she felt like the cause of everything.
If only she and Beko had not made love. The shock of that had snapped Ramus—and she still berated herself for not perceiving his true feelings for her—and the rest had tumbled from there. She squatted down in the heather and closed her eyes, feeling Beko's hands on her thighs and delving in between. When she looked back at the camp, Beko was scattering ashes from the fire and muttering something to Rhiana and Noon. This was a different man.
BEKO FELL IN beside her as soon as they set off. Rhiana was in the lead, with Noon close behind. Nomi sensed that the Serians were nervous.
“If they don't pick up the trail today or tomorrow, I've told them to return to us,” Beko said.
“What? Why?”
“Noreela's a big place. Ramus may have gone due south instead of southeast. Maybe he's trying to take a different route. I'll not have Ramin and Konrad chasing phantoms when there are enough dangers out there already.”
“How big do you think the marauder party was?”
“Noon thinks a dozen horses, maybe more.”
Nomi considered that, and though she was no warrior, it was easy to recognize superior odds.
“Remember, I've fought them before. They're vicious, but not trained. Brawlers, not warriors. Weapons are usually old ones stolen from people they've attacked. And there's as much fighting between marauder clans as there are attacks on travelers.”
“Are you trying to tell me we'll be safe even if we do meet them?” Nomi asked.
“I'm saying we'll have a chance. Hopefully we'll ride right past them, but if we do meet up, I'm hoping they'll avoid a fight.”
“They fought at the temple,” Nomi said.
“No, that was a massacre.”
_____
THE DAY WAS long and hot, and the air seemed to abrade her skin. Nomi could not settle. Every heartbeat could bring something new, and anything new would mostly likely be bad.
What if they come back and they've killed him? What if he fights? What if Lulah fights for him, and they have no choice but to kill her? She went with him for her own reasons. Maybe she's much more for him than for her Serian friends?
What have I started?
What have I done?
She remembered the days of her illness and how terrified she had been, told that she was going to die and helpless to stop the sickness growing in her brain, sending its tendrils through her skull and forcing her to face mortality far sooner than she had ever expected. There had been nightmares that she could not recognize, alien visions of drowning and fading away, and then the option for survival placed before her by the Ventgorian shaman. The guilt had preyed upon her ever since, but it was a price she had paid for life.
Poor Ramus, she thought. Damn Ramus. She hoped she would never see him again, but she could not imagine events work
ing that way. There was much about this voyage that breathed destiny.
JUST BEFORE MIDDAY, the land they rode across started to turn to marsh. And after midday, when the sun had more life behind it than in front, Nomi saw her first marsh wisp.
The heat brought steam from the ground, and the landscape was reminding her more and more of Ventgoria. The horses' hooves squelched down into the soft loam, and spreads of stagnant water reflected dark rot at the sky. If she closed her eyes, she could almost smell the Ventgorian grapes on their suspended vines.
A shape darted across the ground, leaving no footprints or splashes in its wake.
When Nomi blinked and looked again, a huge shadow bore down. It blocked the sun and enveloped her, a darkness rising, crushing light from her senses and flooding her with gloom. It pressed against her and Nomi vomited, great gouts that she could not see in such blankness. She was torn away from the world and taken elsewhere—somewhere deeper, where less existed, a place farther away in perception and looser in her mind, like an idea of Noreela instead of Noreela itself. There was nothing to hold on to there, and she tumbled, feeling a warm splash across her face and throat as she vomited again. The shape was in her now as well as around her, filling her spaces and flooding her organs, bones, flesh.
She struck the ground and saw the shadow shrink to a tiny speck before her.
Nomi tried to cry out but spat chunks of half-digested food instead. It was thick and hard in her mouth, and the sensation made her retch again.
“Nomi!” It was a shout that came as a whisper.
She looked at the hovering thing, close to her and no larger than a fingernail. It was blank as a hole in the world. It shifted left and right, passing over a long-stemmed flower, skirting around a twist of sun-dried wood. Was it teasing her? Playing with her? Or was there no sense to it at all?