by Tim Lebbon
For a beat, he almost went back. Two of them against the Sentinel would perhaps stand a chance. And he even took a step, reaching into the sheath on the back of his belt where he kept a spare knife. But the thing in his head sent a shadow across his mind, erasing the idea of rescue, stripping aside his last few moments' thoughts, turning him once again onto his previous course of action. He felt no regrets or confusion, because he had made up his own mind. He acted of his own free will. That thing in his mind, holding back the pain of the sickness Nomi had given him . . . it was merely helping.
Ramus turned the corner of the building and walked carefully along the base of the wall. He searched for the handholds he needed, and two-thirds of the way along he saw them, spaced unevenly up the wall in the body of an intricate carving. The image showed a creature he did not know, and he used its feet, knees, hips, wings, shoulders and horns to climb to the top.
He heard Nomi's scream, and shook his head to clear the sound.
THE SENTINEL DID not pause to consider its actions; it simply stepped onto the island and came at her.
Nomi brandished the knife and stumbled back, struggling to keep her footing on the uneven ground. She could not help remembering Noon and the others fighting these things, and how the Serians had been quickly beaten. So is this it? she thought. Killed by something inhuman, in the belly of the Great Divide?
Any hope that Ramus would come to her aid had vanished. He had asked her to come with him, but only to share in his discovery. Not because he cared. He had said they were past pettiness, and to Ramus, perhaps everything that had been between them—the bad and the good—was all part of that.
The Sentinel clicked as it came, its almost-human face twisted with hatred . . . and fear.
Nomi fell aside and the creature's clawed hand cut through the air above her. She rolled until she felt the solidity of the building against her back, then stood, one hand holding the knife out, the other pressing against the wall.
The Sentinel turned and faced her, eyes growing wider.
Nomi felt something beneath her hand. The rock was warm, like the flesh of a living thing, and it throbbed. But she did not step away.
Another Sentinel gained the shore and approached from her left.
There was something watching her. Not with eyes, not with thoughts, but with a presence that lessened her humanity. She was a speck of dirt beneath an ant's foot, a fly crawling on a sheebok's hide. She gasped with the weight of insignificance and fell to her knees, and the lake erupted.
Nomi screamed.
Two things surged from the lake and struck the Sentinels, driving the creatures across the rocky shore and striking the building to either side of Nomi. The Voyager scrabbled away on hands and knees, slipping on slick rock and falling onto her back. She could already hear the sounds of the Sentinels being torn apart, and her new aspect meant that she could not help but see their demise.
The things looked like the crabs that fishermen in Long Marrakash hauled from the river mouth, except a hundred times larger. Bodies as long and wide as a human's, legs thick as her thighs, pincers wide enough to envelop her head, they thrashed and slashed at the Sentinels, spreading blood and shreds of flesh across the wall. It only took a few beats and then the crab creatures backed away, claws still snapping at the air. Their several eyes rose on stalks and surveyed what they had done. Then they backed away to the water, passing on either side of Nomi, one of them actually brushing her hand with a stubbled leg. They submerged as quickly as they had appeared, leaving barely a ripple.
One of the Sentinels shifted, and Nomi gasped, but it was only its bloodied torso slipping down the wall.
Carvings and symbols glittered with spilled blood. Nomi closed her eyes but she could smell the carnage, and when she managed to gasp in a fresh breath, she could taste blood and death on the air.
“Protecting you,” Ramus said from somewhere above her. His voice was casual and surprised, as though he had fully expected to find her dead.
“Piss on you,” Nomi said. Her throat hurt as she gasped in another breath, her chest heavy and tight. “I don't want it to protect me.”
Ramus blinked, then looked up and behind her. “More Sentinels coming,” he said. “They won't be put off. Wait down there, see if it'll help you again.”
“Or?” Nomi said.
“Around the corner. You can climb. Footholds and handholds in the carvings, and we've had enough practice at that.”
“You left me to die,” she said, but the words held little power.
Ramus turned his back on her but remained standing on the edge of the roof, staring down at something at his feet.
“What's up there, Ramus?”
He did not answer. He was perfectly motionless, as if waiting for something to happen.
Nomi heard more Sentinels closing in on the island, undeterred by the fate of their cousins. Without even looking to see how close they were, she stood and hurried around the corner of the building.
The stone was warm, she thought. Like something alive.
She started to climb, pushing against the grating agony in her leg, suddenly convinced that Ramus would no longer be there when she reached the roof.
THE ONLY WAY in, he thought. It has to be. But I can't open it yet.
The Sleeping God had saved Nomi from the Sentinels, and there had to be a reason for that. The shadow in his mind bade him wait.
There was movement to his left. Nomi made the roof and stood, swaying slightly, wiping blood from her mouth. She still carried his knife but seemed to have forgotten about it. She glanced across the rooftop, the smooth stone with the circular mark at its center, the places where the thick tubes joined like fluid limbs sprouting from a solid body. When she had taken it all in, she looked at him at last.
“It's so close,” he said. “You and I, we can see it.”
“I don't want to see it,” Nomi said, but her voice betrayed her. Either she had given up hope of avoiding what must happen, or she was submitting to her true desires. The result would be the same.
Ramus wasted no time. He stepped to the center of the roof and knelt beside the circular shape. He plunged his fingers into the groove and pulled them around, dislodging a thick drift of loose dust as he went. “Help me,” he said.
“No.” Nomi knelt at the edge of the roof and watched.
Ramus dug out the whole circle, then drew his spare knife and began working at the crack with that.
“It can't be this simple,” Nomi said.
“Of course it can. It wants us in.”
“But whatever put it in there didn't. Can't you see that?”
Ramus shook his head. It doesn't matter now, he thought. I'm so close. Nothing matters now but this.
The stone beneath his knees was suddenly almost too hot to touch, and he rose into a crouch. A tendril of steam escaped the circular crack he'd cleared, hanging in the air like a condensed breath.
Ramus gasped again as his head pulsed with white-hot pain, and the presence there expanded quickly to smother it, casting it down and showing him the way.
“Ramus?” Nomi said, but her voice seemed very far away.
He put his knife into the groove and levered, and the circular stone slab rose easily. “That side,” he said. “Do the same. Push, lever.”
“No.”
“Nomi.” He saw her indecision, but also the knowledge that she could not turn back now. “Please.”
She knelt opposite him, gasping at the pain from her damaged leg. When she probed with her own knife, the stone slab seemed to rise almost of its own accord, and Ramus pushed at its revealed edge, sliding it onto the surface of the smooth roof.
Behind and below, the Sentinels hooted and clacked as more of them reached the shore of the island. No more crab things came, but they would if they were needed. Events were flowing now, histories being forged, and whatever his intrusion had awoken in the Sleeping God must surely be growing with every beat.
As if in response,
another heavy throb sang through the cave, shaking the building beneath them and echoing from the oily surface of the water.
“What is that?” Nomi asked, but Ramus was sure she knew already.
Heartbeat, he thought.
Steam rose from the hole. A smell as well, like time gone off or life long forgotten.
Ramus sat back, wanting to see into the hole more than anything he'd ever wanted in his life. Yet he was also more terrified than he had ever been. The thing in his mind opened up into a grin, and a flash of agony coursed through his cancer as if to remind him of mortality.
“You should go first,” Nomi said.
Ramus locked eyes with her and leaned forward, falling toward his future.
Chapter 22
RAMUS HAD SPENT a long time trying to imagine a Sleeping God, but he knew now that they were unimaginable.
He fell, struck a warm, leathery membrane and slid down its side. He hit one of the fleshy pipes that came through the ceiling and penetrated the huge sac at the building's center, turning upside down and striking the soft floor with his shoulder. Pushing with his feet, pulling with his hands, he was soon pressed back into a corner of the room, staring at what sat before him.
It did not move, yet he knew that it was more than alive. The age of this thing hung in the air, a miasma of smells and sensations that he could not escape even if he closed his eyes. Its surface was hard and tensed, testament to the pressures within.
“I'm here,” Ramus whispered. His whole life had led to this.
There was more steam in here, but not as much as he had expected, and the open roof allowed some of it to vent to the outside. The walls and floor were warm, and not made of stone. The strange pipes strung across the cavern outside ended here, piercing the leathery surface and pinned there with the stitching of shiny metallic clips. What metal they were made from, he did not know. Who had fixed them there, what had handled those clips and why, all were mysteries to him. But Ramus knew that his time of mystery was drawing to a close. Everything was about to change.
Nomi lowered herself through the hole. She was straining on her arms, looking down at what lay beneath her and sweating as she struggled not to step on it. But there was no alternative. She slipped, crying out as she fell, rolled and struck the floor across the room from Ramus. Out of sight, she spoke.
“What do we do, Ramus? What now?”
“Now it wakes,” he said.
Nomi stood in the far corner of the building, and he could see that she was terrified. Her eyes were wide, the left one surrounded with a dark sheen of fresh blood, and she stared directly at him. How? her eyes asked. Ramus smiled because he could see excitement there as well.
“It wakes,” he said, “but I'm not sure how.”
“You've come all this way . . . ?”
“I don't think it was ever truly asleep,” he said. “Its body may be, but not its mind. That's alive. Dreaming of escape, perhaps, or locked in nightmares about never being freed, but it's always active. Always waiting.”
“Waiting for someone like you?” He nodded. “Someone like me.”
“I hear them,” Nomi said, and Ramus heard them too. Clicking, hooting, the Sentinels were climbing the sides of the building, using their long legs and arms to haul themselves up onto the roof. They sounded wilder than ever, but Ramus thought it was probably fear. They made noise because silence would allow them to think.
“Cut the sac,” Ramus said. “Put your knife in, Nomi, and let what's inside out.”
“It can't be that easy. After so long?”
“We can only try.” And the more Ramus thought about it, the simpler it became. The thing was trapped in there somehow, unable to break free of its own accord, but if someone willing to do the freeing came here, then why should it be difficult? This place was hidden from the rest of the land, protected by the Sentinels because of how simple it would be to wake.
“Nothing should sleep forever,” Ramus said, and he placed the tip of his knife against the hard, leathery sac.
Shapes appeared at the circular hole above the center of the room. Sentinels. They stared down with wide eyes and mouths hanging open, and for once they uttered nothing. They were looking at the thing with dreadful awe.
Ramus leaned on his knife and pushed it through.
Age hissed out from the fresh wound. He held his breath, but he felt the warm exhalation against his neck and chest.
Words from the parchments came back to him, strange phrases other than the stone-curse he had used so much. The shadow in his mind seemed to filter them and make one phrase stand out, and Ramus spoke it. He felt power throbbing through the knife and into his hands.
The Sentinels screamed. They sounded like children being slaughtered, and they carried on screaming as they scrabbled away across the roof and fell to the ground outside. Others took up their scream—a wailing lament that filled the room and raised the hairs on Ramus's neck and arms.
He pushed harder and tugged at the knife, cutting upward. He muttered that phrase again, but this time it felt redundant, its purpose already achieved.
More air hissed out, and it had a brownish tinge.
“Nomi?” he said.
“I can't,” she said. She had backed into the corner and held the knife up before her, shaking as if she did not know which way to aim the blade: outward, or inward. “What have we done?”
“Found a God,” Ramus said, but his voice sounded distant and insignificant now, and nothing he could say would match the grandness of this moment. So he fell silent as he worked the knife upward, widening the cut and trying to see inside. It was too dark, and the air emerging was joined by a waft of steam that scorched his face, dried his eyes. He winced and stepped back. He still held the knife, aimed at another part of the sac, ready to start another cut . . . but it was not needed.
The sac shivered all across its surface. Dust shimmered into the damp air. The pipes protruding from the sac shook, and the junctions where they met the roof and walls cracked and poured dust and grit. Ramus saw for the first time that they were partly transparent, and something seemed to boil and roll within, like clouds driven into a frenzy by a terrible storm.
Shadows reached into the pipes. These shapes had defined edges, sharp against the tumult, and they bent and pressed against the fleshy sides, stretching them to the point of breaking.
The Sentinels screeched, Nomi shouted something, but Ramus did not understand. Language seemed superfluous against something so powerful and elemental.
The first pipe broke. Something gushed from it, a heavy fluid that barely splashed when it touched the ground. Gases rose and twisted in the air, forming shapes that seemed to move of their own volition. A black, shiny thing protruded from the rent in the pipe. Its sharp end opened like a giant claw. It clicked shut again, and in that brief, violent sound Ramus heard laughter and weeping.
The Sentinels had fallen silent.
Another pipe ruptured, and another, and the chamber floor was covered with the slick, hot fluid. Vapors danced before Ramus's eyes and within, seemingly working their way into his mind and flirting with memories, toying with identity. He felt threatened and courted, and when he raised the knife it burned his palm and fell into the fluid at his feet.
The things withdrew back into the sac, and for a while it was silent and motionless. The shapes trembling in the air dispersed into shapeless drifts, waving here and there with the effects of their combined exhalations.
I'm still breathing, Ramus thought. He remembered Ten, their journey south and the climb, and history flooded back in, returning his self. The presence was no longer in his mind with hands wrapped around his illness, ready to squeeze and coerce.
He looked away from the sac for a beat and Nomi was looking at him. She no longer seemed shocked, terrified or surprised. Her eyes now were full of blame.
“They've gone,” he said, nodding up at the roof.
Nomi shook her head, but she seemed unwilling or unable to talk.
I know, he thought. Not gone. Just waiting. They know things have changed, and their purpose is dead. He wondered whether the Sentinels would be murderous or suicidal.
The sac started to move. The gash where he had sliced it puckered open, fleshy lips parting, fluid flowing, vapors dancing once again.
And Ramus bore witness to a great rebirth.
A SHADOW ROSE. Nomi could hear the sound of ripping, see the dark things emerging from the sac, scratching at the stone wall behind Ramus and the ceiling above. They were similar to the claws on those crab-things outside, but more complex, their shiny surface home to thousands of stiff hairs, joints silvery and almost metallic in appearance. Where they touched the walls, they carved deep scratches, and symbols began to take shape. The walls shook. The ceiling rattled, actually lifting up and down on the wall behind Ramus so that Nomi caught brief glimpses of the outside.
The ground shook, sending heavy ripples through the fluid that now covered the floor.
Ramus! she wanted to shout, but her voice had left her.
The thing rose before her old friend, colleague and enemy, and she could no longer see his eyes.
She looked up at the circular entrance hole. No faces there now, but she could see things falling from the cave's ceiling and hear the heavy splashes. Stone cracked, steam hissed and roared somewhere far off. The wall she was leaning against shook and she pushed herself away, but that did not lessen the vibration that seemed to move the air itself.
The Sleeping God was awake, the Fallen God had risen, and as it emerged from its place of rest, or prison, she could hear, above the sounds of the building and the cave beyond slowly destroying themselves, the creaks of its joints snapping back into use. It was vaguely reminiscent of the Sentinels' communication, and she wondered whether the God was speaking to them.
It heaved itself suddenly from the sack, reared up and placed several black limbs against the stone ceiling. It lifted and threw, and as it spun into the darkness, the stone slab cracked in two.