Fallen

by Tim Lebbon

  “And if we don't find anywhere?” Rhiana said.

  “If that happens, we tie ourselves to the cliff face.”

  “And sleep?”

  “If you want strength for the next day, yes.”

  “What about wildlife?” Ramin asked. “Get stung up there by something like the wasp that got Noon, and piss on all of us.”

  “Nobody knows the sort of things that live this far south,” Nomi said.

  “Exactly,” Ramin said. “It's always gloomy here, even when we can see sunlight on the ground to the north. Always dusk.

  Creatures that come out at dusk . . . sometimes, they're not too nice.”

  Nomi felt a twinge of annoyance. “You think there are things up there worse than your seethe-gators?”

  “I doubt that,” Ramin said, standing straighter.

  “Then that's why you're here,” she said. “Because you're all warriors and I'm not.”

  “I'm glad this is all so well planned,” Rhiana said, and Nomi almost cursed. But then she recognized her own annoyance for what it really was—embarrassment. If Ramus were here he would probably have better answers for these questions. Nomi had essentially followed him, because he was one of the best.

  What did that make her?

  “We go now,” Beko said. “We leave the horses here and walk until we can't walk anymore. Then we climb. The only way is up.”

  Nomi smiled, and thought, I hope so.

  Chapter 15

  NOMI WAS EXHAUSTED. She had never felt so tired or drained. Her arms and legs shook, sweat soaked her back, she could not bring herself to look back, down or up. The rock before her was her whole world, and to look farther afield than the next handhold would be to doom herself to terror.

  Because Nomi was scared of heights. That had come as a shock, but the realization also struck her with a force too powerful to deny. In Ventgoria, she had sometimes felt nervous climbing the vertical ladders to their stilted dwellings, but now she was higher above Noreela than she had ever been.

  I won't look down.

  Rhiana had gone first, rope slung over her left shoulder and belt jangling with hooks and pitons. She took her time to begin with, selecting handholds with care, hammering the pitons in and marking the route with rope. But within an hour of beginning she was far up the cliff, and Noon and Ramin had followed. Beko insisted that Nomi go next.

  I won't look down.

  Another hour into their climb, Ramin had slipped. He cried out as he slid down the vertical stone-face, hands slapping and scraping for purchase, knees bent and feet held back in case they struck a protuberance and flipped him out into space. Noon shouted up to Rhiana and the two braced themselves, taking the weight as Ramin jerked to a halt.

  “It's okay!” he had shouted, finding a grip and scrabbling at the rock with his feet. “It's okay!” But his voice had sounded far from okay.

  I will not look down.

  She tried to follow Ramin as best she could. He called down to her now and then, guiding her hands or feet left or right to where he had found handholds. She did not look up to acknowledge him. If she did that, she would see Noon past him, and then Rhiana higher still, and the clouds way above her, and something about the scale of what they were doing would suddenly hit home. Then she would have to look back down at Beko—

  I will not pissing look down!

  —and that could well be when her real problems began.

  She did not want to freeze. Panic ran its fingers through her chest and down into her groin, a curiously intimate sensation, like a malevolent ex-lover. If she froze, Beko would come up for her and try to ease her fears, and if she knew there was no one below her she would . . .

  “I'm going to look down.”

  Panting, sweat cooling on her skin and chilling her whenever the breeze blew, Nomi looked down between her feet.

  Dizziness struck and tried to prize her from the cliff. “Oh no,” she said, “oh no, oh no . . .” Have we really come so far? Below her she could see Beko's head as he worked at a piton, easing it loose with a pick so that they could relay them up to Rhiana when the time came. Past him, an outcropping in the cliff that they had passed barely an hour before. And past that, farther down, deeper into the dusky light that seemed to be the Divide's daytime, the horses and camp they had left behind. Two of the animals had vanished, but the others still lingered around the camp, chewing halfheartedly at the scant vegetation. They looked unbelievably small. If I fell, it would take me a dozen beats to reach them, she thought, and she wondered what would go through her mind as she tumbled past Beko and death welcomed her down.

  “Nomi!” Ramin called. The rope before her was taut.

  She pressed her forehead against cool stone and took in a few deep, slow breaths.

  “Nomi?”

  She looked up. Ramin stared down at her, sweat glistening on his bald head. “Taking a breath,” she said.

  “Are you all right?”

  She nodded.

  “Are you sure? Need me to come down?”

  And this from the man who just fell, Nomi thought, amazed. “No,” she called. “Wait. I'm coming.” She started climbing again.

  Space pulled behind her, seeming to grapple at her clothing, tug her hair, claw into her insides and wrap itself around her organs as it hauled her out and away from the cliff. And the rock before her held a weight as well, keeping her pressed against it and only letting go to allow her to move higher. For now the weight of the rock was winning. If she turned around again, or looked down, she might well upset that balance.

  I'm scared of heights, she thought, curling her fingers into a crack and pulling hard. Isn't that just fucking great.

  SHE FELT THE day melting away, and the thought of trying to sleep hanging like this was terrible. Nomi could not face that. She called down to Beko and asked him how long they had to go, then she turned and called up to Ramin, asking him the same thing. Their shouted responses sounded flat and distant, as though the rock refused to echo them.

  “One more hour!” Ramin shouted down to her. “Rhiana thinks she sees a ledge.”

  So they climbed on, and as her heart beat out a rapid time, Nomi became more and more certain that they would be hanging here all night.

  She turned and looked down at Beko again. I won't let it beat me, she thought. I can't. That's pathetic.

  Beko smiled up at her. “Fantastic view of your arse from down here,” he called.

  Nomi laughed out loud. “Oh, I bet it's marvelous.”

  She looked past him to the ground, and the horses were no longer visible. Maybe they had all gone, or maybe they were just too small to see. It was difficult to tell. She took a deep breath and looked behind her, out across Noreela, and wondered how far north they would be able to see. She thought she could make out the last of the standing stones they had passed, but it could have been an optical illusion. The expanse of landscape was stunning, and quite beautiful. Some birds flew past below her.

  Somebody shouted, a distant call at first too far away to hear, but it was repeated by Ramin. “Ledge!”

  Thank all the gods, Nomi thought. She pressed herself against the rock again, then forced herself to start moving. The more she thought about what she was doing, the worse it would become. And if she fell . . . ?

  Beko would catch her.

  SHE SAW RAMIN reach the ledge and swing his leg up onto it, sliding out of view for the first time since their climb began. His head soon appeared again over the edge, accompanied by Rhiana and Noon.

  None of them looked very happy.

  When she reached the ledge, Beko not more than a dozen steps below her, the Serians reached out to haul her up. She collapsed beside them and tried to relax, but her muscles spasmed and continued to knot as though she had to hold herself even here.

  “Nomi,” Ramin said.

  She kept her eyes closed and nodded her head.

  “We have a place for the night, but someone was here before us.”

  Ramus
! she thought. She opened her eyes and tried to sit up, but her body rebelled. Instead she raised her head just as Beko was pulled over the lip, and she saw that her first reaction was wrong.

  There was a skeleton splayed across the ledge, selfishly taking up its widest part. A few shreds of clothing remained around the clean white bones, but there was little else.

  “Well, now we know why some people don't come back,” Ramin said.

  “Been here a long time,” Rhiana said. “Nothing to show who it was.”

  “No climbing stuff?” Nomi had looked into the skull's eye sockets and then around at the scattered bones, and it was the first thing she'd noticed.

  “Nothing,” Rhiana said.

  “Bones are spread out,” Noon said. “Shattered.”

  “They fell.” Nomi sat up and shuffled toward the back of the ledge, terribly aware of the wide-open space behind her. They were all panting with exhaustion, and Beko lay out along the far end of the ledge, perhaps eight steps from her. She was glad she was not the only one who appeared exhausted.

  “But having no climbing equipment . . .” Nomi said.

  “I could have got this far without ropes,” Rhiana said. “Difficult, but I'm sure I could if I was determined enough. And maybe whatever he brought with him has been blown from the ledge. Or washed away by rain.”

  “The bones would be gone too.” Nomi looked back at the skull and saw the cracks around the eye sockets, flakes of bone missing here and there. The back of the dome was also smashed, as though something had broken it open for the brain inside.

  “I don't like it,” Noon said. “Shove it over. I won't sleep here if that thing's with us.”

  “I'm not touching the dead,” Ramin said.

  Nomi shook her head and picked up one of the leg bones. It was completely separated from the knee and foot. Smashed to pieces, she thought. He must have fallen a long way. She threw the bone out into space and they all watched it arc away from them, tumbling end over end until it disappeared into the gloom. Then she shoved the rest of the bones with her feet, kicking them away. She heard Rhiana gasp as she did so.

  “Just a dead climber,” she said when she'd finished. “I'm sure he won't mind us taking his ledge.”

  But the skeleton troubled her more than she showed. As the Serians pinned ropes in around them to prepare for the night, Nomi looked out across the darkening landscape of Noreela and wondered who the climber had been. Or maybe he hadn't been a climber at all.

  The ledge was small, four steps deep and maybe a dozen wide, and the five of them huddled closely together. That would help them keep warm, but it also made it awkward when one of them had to answer nature's call. And they found no food. No plants, insects, lichen or grubs, so their evening meal was dried sheebok skin that Rhiana had brought with her all the way from Marrakash. It was bitter and hard, but at least chewing it to pulp took time and concentration, and it was a high-energy food.

  When full darkness fell and Rhiana made sure they were all tied in tightly, the cold really began to take effect. Nomi had Beko on one side of her and Ramin on the other, and they all pressed in close to share warmth. She pitied Noon and Rhiana at either end.

  Things cried out in the darkness, some of them from the plains far below, others from the open air before the cliffs. Shadows appeared high above and drifted across the land, and smaller shapes darted in and seemed to attack or feed from them. The sounds of hunter and hunted echoed from the rock, and Nomi closed her eyes to shut them out.

  “I have a story,” Ramin said at last, and Nomi could have hugged him.

  Ramin told his tale of sea caves, smugglers and water serpents, and his voice was strong enough to take her far away for a while.

  THEY HARDLY SLEPT, and next morning as the clouds to the east lightened, they were keen to move.

  They took the same formation as before, and Nomi was sure her fingers and toes were so stiff and bruised that they would fail her. But she quickly found a rhythm, working with Ramin ahead of her and Beko behind, and the climb proceeded well. Physically it was the hardest thing Nomi had ever done, and she discovered depths of determination she never knew she had. But mentally, though it was a challenge climbing so steadily and painfully toward the unknown, excitement won out. By midday of that second day, they had started to work as a true team, and by the time light began to fade again, Nomi realized she had actually enjoyed the climb.

  Some of what they saw underlined that this was a unique place. There were spiders that lived on the cliffs, legs growing up from the top of their torso and down from their abdomen. They moved quickly across the rocky surface, and they seemed unconcerned with these human invaders, watching with what could only be curiosity as the clumsy climbers went by. There were also a few insects that had adapted to vertical living, building small homes from spit and dust that clung solidly to the rock.

  That evening there was no wide ledge. Though they had passed a crevasse in the cliff earlier that afternoon, it had been too early to stop. So Rhiana passed down the spare rope she carried over one shoulder, and one by one they fixed extra pitons into the rock and tied themselves in. Nomi still held herself up to begin with, finding it difficult to trust the rope cradle. But as weariness stiffened her limbs she eased down, and by the time darkness fell she was sitting fully in the rigged harness.

  She had been able to look down and behind her that day; they were so high that there were no real details visible on the ground below. The sense of vast space behind her and the solidity of the end of Noreela before her was still staggering, but the scale had changed.

  Looking down now was like staring into nothing.

  “How far do you think to the clouds?” Beko asked. He was tied in ten steps below and to the side of her, giving her room to do whatever she might need to during the night.

  “We've done well today,” Nomi said. “Maybe we'll reach there tomorrow?”

  “We won't be able to see so far then,” he said.

  “No.”

  “We won't know how high to go. Don't even know for sure whether there's a top at all. Maybe we'll find climbers tied in like we are, dead from old age.”

  This defeatist voice did not sound like Beko. “I'm sure it ends,” she said. “And so was Ramus.”

  Later that night Noon called out from above and directed their attention to the east. Clear in the night, far along the cliff and lower than them, Nomi saw the diffused glow of a fire.

  Ramus, she thought. Brave Ramus. Mad Ramus. She was scared of him, but as things became more remarkable—and Noreela felt farther and farther behind—she found herself hoping that they would meet again.

  NEXT MORNING, RHIANA woke them all from troubled, uncertain rest. She had woken early and climbed on alone, and now she was a hundred steps above Noon. “Eggs!” she called down. “Eggs for breakfast, and a ledge to cook them on!”

  They climbed, and by the time they reached Rhiana she had started a small fire on the ledge and boiled three huge, blue eggs. Nomi was startled by their size and worried that the parents would return, but the Serians seemed unconcerned.

  They shared an egg between two and it was the most filling, satisfying breakfst Nomi could remember. Up here in the fresh, cool air, much of Noreela laid out behind her as she ate, she felt the familiar thrill of exhilaration drive through her again.

  I wonder if Ramus is breakfasting as well as this, she thought, and she sent a good-natured thought his way.

  “They were miles away, and much lower,” Rhiana said unprompted. She dropped the eggshell she had been licking and the strengthening breeze plucked it away. “We'll reach the clouds before them.” She looked up and the others followed her gaze. Sometimes the constant cloud cover seemed close enough to touch, other times it was too far away to discern anything but a uniform gray.

  “Feel like I could just let go and fall into them,” Ramin said.

  “A favor, Ramin,” Beko said. “Don't try.”

  The bald Serian raised an eyebrow an
d looked past Nomi at Beko. “Captain, surely you'd catch me if I fell?”

  “Depends on my mood,” Beko said. “I've had no meat for more than a day, and my stomach gets . . . cranky.”

  “Beko's cranky stomach,” Rhiana said, quietly shaking her head as if it was something they'd all had to deal with before.

  Another gust of wind whispered across the cliff face from the west. They leaned into it, and an instant of panic seized Nomi—cool, dark and deep, the fear of falling and the greater fear of climbing some more—but she squeezed her eyes shut and willed it away.

  “We're doing well,” Rhiana said, and Nomi silently thanked her with a glance.

  “So let's carry on!” Noon said. “Maybe if this thing does have a top, there are people there. And if there are people, there will be daughters, widows, wives.” He laughed out loud and released his harness.

  We are doing well, Nomi thought. There's a breeze, but it's not yet a gale. The nights are cool, but not too cold. There's no meat, but we found eggs. And those clouds . . . we may even reach them by this afternoon.

  They climbed on. The weather remained stable, interrupted by occasional gusts of wind that came and went without warning. They made the climb challenging but exciting. Nobody complained. The cliff offered numerous handholds and narrow ledges, and Nomi fell into an exhausted rhythm.

  THEY HEARD IT before they saw it.

  They were climbing with quiet concentration. Nomi had already spotted the rent in the cliff face directly above Ramin—Rhiana had climbed past it, and Noon hung a dozen steps along the cliff—and when the low growl sounded, that was the first place she looked.

  There was nothing to see. But the sound came again, like a rumbling stomach. She glanced around, wondering whether thunder was rolling in from the distance.

  When she looked up again, Rhiana was gesturing to Noon and Ramin. She put her finger to her lips, leaned back and took a small crossbow from her belt.