by Tim Lebbon
“Sorry,” he said.
She looked down and shook her head, unable to speak.
After a while they started climbing again. Ramus was sure that they would make it to the cloud level today, and already the rock before them was damper than before, even beneath the constant breath of the wind. We should have been swept from here by now by the gales, he thought. But though there were occasional strong gusts that forced them to hold tight, the winds they had been expecting this high up were absent. Ramus did not know why, and he did not dwell on the fact. He simply gave thanks.
He slipped again before noon. One moment he was holding on well, the next his feet went from beneath him and his sore fingers scraped away from the handholds. It surprised him this time, and Lulah cried out when the roped pulled at her waist. Ramus hung in space, spinning slowly, head and arms back, and he thought he probably looked not much different from the corpse they had passed way below. The pain in his head that had knocked him from the cliff consumed the whole of him for a beat, forcing blood rapidly around his body and staggering his heart. He thought he cried out, but he could say nothing. The sound was only in his mind.
The agony receded as quickly as it had come, leaving him weak and uncertain. A voice came in from the distance, louder, louder, and it was telling him to wake up.
Nomi, in one of her nightmares?
Ramus looked up and saw Lulah straining above him, her mouth opening and closing as the distant voice grew closer and found itself.
“Pissing wake up, Ramus, or I swear by whatever god you choose, I'll cut this fucking rope!” Ramus lifted his hands to hold the rope. They moved very slowly. He looked down, found footholds and then pulled himself flat against the cliff.
“What the piss was that?” Lulah shouted.
“Slipped,” Ramus said.
“Slipped? You were gone there, Ramus! I thought you'd passed out.”
“No, slipped, that's all.” He pressed his face to the cool stone and shivered as the breeze kissed his sweaty body. He needed a drink, but he dared not unstrap the water skin from around his neck. Not right now. The sickness in his head, the cruel betrayer, might choose that moment to punch him again.
“I need you to stay with me,” Lulah said. “I'm here under your pay, Ramus, but I'll not kill myself for you. Not like this.”
He looked up at last and nodded, seeing past her anger to the fear. He could smell fear in the sweaty aroma that drifted down from her and rose from his own body. They had both almost died then, and not quickly. If they fell, missed the ledges, drifted out past the rocky projections, it would take a long time for them to strike the ground.
“Maybe we should stop and rest when we can,” he said.
“Yes.”
They remained there for a while, gathering their composure and letting their beating hearts settle a little before moving on.
LATER THE PAIN came again, and he slipped for a third time, and when he regained his hand- and footholds he really believed Lulah was going to cut the rope. If she did, they would no longer be climbing together, and if and when he slipped for a fourth time, he would fall out of Noreela forever.
Lulah found a small ledge where they could spend the rest of that day and the night, and for a long time she did not speak. Ramus drifted off to sleep, exhaustion taking him down past the terror that had him in its clasp. He thought he may visit Nomi's own nightmares, but when he woke up there was nothing but pain. The sickness grew worse, a traitor to his body, and he began to wonder whether he would live to see the top of the Divide at all.
AFTER RAMIN’S DEATH, it took them the rest of that afternoon to reach the cloud cover. And it was the worst afternoon of Nomi's life.
The cave from which the creature had emerged was the first of several. They came across the next one soon after Ramin tumbled away, and this time the creature inside came out long before they reached it. Growling, wings whisking like metal sails, it perched on the lip of the fissure and wailed down at them. Beko again climbed up beside Nomi, and Noon and Rhiana put distance between them so that it could not take them both at the same time. Rhiana fired an arrow up, but the distance was too great; it bounced from the huge creature's underside and clattered from the rock face. Rhiana tried to catch it but missed.
The thing tipped forward, leaning out into space until it could unfurl its wings and launch into the air. It drifted away from the Divide, wings making great thumping sounds at the sky, legs hanging below it like a giant wasp, snout sniffing at the air.
Rhiana had reached a narrow ledge and she managed to turn, facing away from the cliff and held in place by a single piton.
As the creature drifted in at them, Beko moved sideways so that he was pressed against Nomi. He curled one arm around her and pushed her firmly against the cliff.
“Shouldn't you be shooting at that thing?” she asked.
“We're hired to protect you.” She heard little affection in his voice, and she wondered yet again whether they were resenting her now, thinking she'd lost control.
Noon fired crossbow bolts out into space, every one of them finding their target. A few ricocheted from the creature's hide or its scaled snout, but others struck home and lodged there, eliciting screeches that bounced from the cliff face and seemed to make it shake. The animal came on, angling for Noon, aiming for what it perceived as its greatest risk. That was where the Serians' deception worked.
Above Noon and twenty steps to the side, Rhiana loosed her arrow only when she was sure of her aim. It struck the flying thing behind its wide head and went deep. The animal's legs tensed out and down, its wings forked upward and its head pulled back and turned, trying to dislodge the arrow.
Noon stepped from the cliff as the stricken animal headed for him.
It struck the rock with the sound of wet breaking things, and it was already dead when it fell away.
The rope connecting Noon and Rhiana tensed and swung him to the west, and the falling animal caught him a glancing blow with one of its flailing legs. He reached for a rocky outcropping and held on, the rope sagging again, and he grinned down at Nomi.
“Piece of piss!” he said.
And that time, it was. But there were more. They climbed, and each time they saw the shadow of a cave above them they tried to shift sideways to avoid it. And each time that happened, the snout of a monster would appear, silhouetted against the underside of the clouds, its claws hauling it to the edge of its home, and when the time was right it would fall into space, wings unfurling, legs trailing, swooping up and out in readiness to scream in and pluck them from the cliff.
The creatures' dumbness saved them. They attacked one at a time, and if others were watching, they seemed to learn nothing. Twice more Noon played bait, and then Rhiana would finish them with an expertly placed arrow behind the head. One time Noon had to swing to avoid the plummeting animal, the other it was Nomi and Beko who were almost swept from the cliff by the falling corpse.
Others came. Noon and Rhiana swapped roles, and between each attack they climbed as hard and fast as they could. Nomi had taken it to mind that once in the cover of clouds, the attacks would end, but the dark idea lingered that these things would only use the clouds for cover. If that happened, they were all finished.
And to add to their problems, smaller flying things started buzzing them. To begin with, Nomi thought they may have been the young of those larger monsters, but these looked very different, and in some ways more disturbing because of that. They had light wings and furred bodies, and their fleshy legs looked almost like thin human arms. They never attacked, but they flew in close enough to keep everyone on edge between encounters with the larger creatures.
Nomi was utterly exhausted, traumatized at seeing Ramin slaughtered by the animal and then cut away by his comrades, and the fear of being trapped haunted her between each attack. She felt sick, and a headache pounded at her skull—altitude sickness, Beko said. The weight of the emptiness above Noreela was heavier than the Great Divide, a
nd it pulled at her, made her woozy.
They climbed, fought off the flying things, and Nomi believed that dusk was falling. They would be trapped out here on the cliff in the dark. Somewhere far below, Ramin waited to welcome them into his broken embrace.
“We're almost there,” Beko said below her. “Nomi?”
She turned and looked down, trying to concentrate her vision so that she saw only his face and not beyond. “Where?” she asked.
“The clouds. We're almost there.”
She looked up and saw that he was right. Rhiana was climbing ahead, leaning back to scan the cliffs above her, but also eager to reach the clouds.
It started raining. It was a fine, cool mist, and as long as they kept climbing Nomi knew it would refresh them. She opened her mouth and relished the chill on her tongue.
“One more cave!” Rhiana called down.
No, Nomi thought. No more. She had lost count of how many things Noon and Rhiana had taken down between them. There were few arrows and crossbow bolts left.
They all waited where they were, Noon loading his crossbow, while Rhiana edged closer to the opening. She was almost out of sight in the misty haze, just a shadow moving across the dark dampness of the cliff, and Nomi blinked several times as she saw the Serian reach the cave.
“Nothing!” Rhiana called. Her voice floated down, softened by the cloud.
Noon grinned at Nomi and she smiled back, but even that took strength she no longer had.
“Nothing in here!” Rhiana shouted, louder this time. “Only water, and grubs to eat, and somewhere dry for the night.”
Nomi rested her forehead against the cliff. We'll beat you, she thought, hoping the Divide could hear her. We'll find your secrets yet.
LULAH STOOD ON the edge of the ledge, rope-free, and Ramus felt queasy just watching her. A gust of wind could send her plummeting forever.
“Do you think you're strong enough?” she asked at last.
“I think so, yes.”
“If you fall again, Ramus, I'll do my best to hold on to you. But if you fall and I don't think I can hold you, I'll not let you pull me from this cliff.”
It was cold, but it had to be said, and Ramus appreciated that. “I wouldn't want you to die for me,” he said.
Lulah nodded. “You know I'm afraid of you?”
“Afraid of what I'm learning from those pages, more like.”
“No,” she said. “I'm afraid of you. Those words you used on Konrad . . . they were a weapon. It takes a person to use a weapon, and it's that person that scares me.”
Ramus did not know what to say. He had the sudden urge to share everything with this woman he barely knew, but how would that sound? Could he really tell her that the God that might be atop this Divide might be fallen?
He thought not. Even he did not really know what that meant. A myth within a myth . . .
“We should go,” Lulah said.
On that third day, they passed a ledge where a dead body lay sprawled. It was to the west and difficult to see, but from that distance it seemed to Ramus that it was too tall for a human, arms and legs too long. One limb trailed over the edge of the ledge and hung down, and he could make out the separate sticks of its lengthy fingers. It wore clothing of some sort, and that's what troubled Ramus the most. If it was not human and it wore clothing, then what was it?
He wanted to investigate, but Lulah refused. “We go up or down,” she said. “Not sideways. Besides, something killed who-or whatever that is.” So they climbed on and left the corpse where it lay.
Nausea came and went, and the pain in his head, and Ramus thought it was his illness until he saw Lulah rubbing at her own temples. The impact of how high they were hit him then. They were climbing out of the world.
To the west, they saw things drifting out from the cliff and back again, too far away to be identified. Ramus hoped they remained at that distance, and saw Lulah casting nervous glances their way for the rest of the morning.
As he climbed, Ramus whispered those new words to himself, and when they paused in a fissure at noon, he took out the parchment pages and ran his fingers over them, reciting the words he had learned in his head, trying to read those he had not. He wrote in his journal and Lulah sat apart from him, back turned, obviously not eager to see the pages for herself. Ramus could understand. They frightened him as well.
THEY REACHED THE clouds. They were cool, and though the rock face became wet and slippery, Ramus welcomed this new step on their climb. Through the clouds, he thought, and everything will change. Noreela would be out of sight, the sun above them, and perhaps they would be able to see the top of the Divide. Either that, or they would find that it truly had no top.
They climbed slowly, pausing frequently to adjust to the altitude. The nausea remained. It took most of an afternoon to climb through the clouds.
When they emerged above the mist and looked up, and saw at last where the Great Divide ended high above them, Ramus felt a thrill of discovery that threatened to swipe him from the cliff. He held on tight and Lulah looked back down at him, smiling. There was a tear in her eye, because they had found something remarkable.
And the thing in his mind—that alien presence nestled next to the illness that would kill him—swallowed his pain, and gave him the strength to climb.
PART THREE
Where
Sleeping
Gods Lie
Voyager—The Scheme of Things—Descent
“To the discovered, the discoverer can be a god.”
Sordon Perlenni, the First Voyager
Chapter 17
NOMI WANTED TO complete the ascent herself; it was something about pride. Rhiana and Noon stood on top of the cliff, looking down at her and Beko, but unable to stop glancing back over their shoulders every few beats. Their eyes were wide and amazed, their hands reached down and Nomi did not want to know. Don't tell me, she thought. I want to see it for myself.
Beko was climbing beside her now, and she had the impression that he had slowed his pace to climb with her. She was exhausted. With the end so close, it felt as though her body was giving up on her at last. Her chest wheezed as she gasped in thin air, her arms and legs shook uncontrollably, nausea seemed to leach strength from her muscles, but she did not want anyone's help. If Beko reached out for her she would have to tell him that. She was sure he would understand.
She climbed until there was no longer blank stone in front of her face. Instead she saw Rhiana's scratched and bruised legs and, beyond them, a world that should not exist.
Rhiana reached down to grab her arms but Nomi shook her head. “No! I'll do it. We've come so far. . . .” The Serian stepped back, still keeping a good hold on the climbing rope, and Nomi hauled herself from the cliff face and onto the ground above.
Grass grew right to the cliff's edge, and it was a deep, dark green, lush beneath her face. There were small white and yellow flowers pressing against her cheek, and she inhaled their scent. They were similar to the meadow daisies of Noreela, but not exactly alike. Up here, she guessed that nothing would be exactly like anything else.
She raised herself on her arms and Rhiana stepped aside to let her see.
The plateau was rolling tundra, with a few stark trees growing here and there, and frequent, heavy clumps of a thick gorse. She was not exactly sure what she had expected—a ridge, perhaps, falling rapidly away to whatever lay south of the Great Divide—but what she saw was so similar to much of the Noreelan landscape that she felt a moment of disappointment. But only a moment. Because as she stood on shaking legs, accepting Rhiana's steadying hand at last, she was struck by two things. First, the few trees she saw were of a species she had never seen before; spidery yet strong, hardy growths that would bend easily to the winds that must howl across this place. And second, this was somewhere new. Whether it resembled Noreela or not, this was somewhere else entirely.
She had discovered the top of the Great Divide.
Nomi closed her eyes and swayed,
feeling Rhiana's hand tighten around her wrist. She breathed deeply of the scant air and smelled scents she had never smelled before, looked up at the sun blazing down on a land no one had ever seen and returned from to tell the tale.
“We're here,” she croaked. Climbing through the clouds had made her chest heavy, one of many discomforts that marked what they had done. “We're all here.”
“Not all,” Beko said. “Ramin would have been amazed. Even he would have found no jokes to make about this.”
“I look south and see nothing,” Noon said. “I thought there may be . . . I don't know. Something.”
“There is something,” Nomi said. “Grass, trees, plants. Low hills. That sky, a deeper blue than I've ever seen. A few clouds, even so high. A whole new world.”
“But farther south?” Noon said. He shook his head, perhaps unable to comprehend what he was seeing and what it meant. “What's at the other edge of the plateau?”
“I don't know,” Nomi said. “Not yet. A fall into another land, perhaps?”
“Maybe there's just another Great Divide.” Beko stood behind Nomi, his heat touching her like he had not touched her for days. As if reading her thoughts he placed his hands on her arms, gentle enough to make her believe he meant it.
“That's just chilling, thank you,” Rhiana said.
Beko laughed. It had the taint of madness to it, but they all took it up and enjoyed the venting of emotion, amazed that they had made it, traumatized by the climb. Nomi felt sick and exhausted, and it was only now that she appreciated how weary the others looked. And they had been fighting as well as climbing.
Her laughter turned to tears, and the Serians did not notice because they also wept.
HER BODY NEEDED nothing more than rest, but Nomi could not allow that. Rhiana guessed they had climbed almost three miles, and the other Serians agreed, and Nomi found it incredible that such a short distance could separate two worlds.
They followed the line of the cliff to the west to begin with, finding no signs that anyone else had ever climbed this far. The first time they saw animal life, the Serians tensed, bearing their weapons against what was revealed as a herd of heavily horned goats. The animals scampered out of a gully a hundred steps to the south and wandered toward them, fearless and calm. Even when they started walking again, the goats simply watched them go.