Fallen (27 page)

“And now I'm spooking myself before sleep,” he said, but in truth he was enthused by his breakthrough with the parchments. He would sleep for a while now, let his unconscious work on the problems. And in the morning, while Lulah prepared breakfast, he would peruse the pages once more.

The time would come when he should tell her what they might find at journey's end. But until he could make more sense of the parchments, he would keep such possibilities to himself.

HE SLEPT WITH
the holed stone still around his neck, and that night he dreamed of the Widow. She was younger than she had been when he met her, and there was something almost beautiful about her appearance. But she was still aloof and alone, exuding a haughty indifference when he tried to tell her of things beyond the mountains. He had Ten's pages in his mind, though he did not speak of them, and the Widow came close, fixing him with bright green eyes that would fade to gray with age.
Do not fool with curses you do not know,
she said. And he smiled, because he did not believe in curses.

But you do believe in charms?
the Widow asked. That gave Ramus pause, because even in the dream he felt that weight around his neck.

He awoke to darkness, the dream melted away, and he understood that the Widow's warning and question were really his own.

THE SMELL OF
cooking roused Ramus from a light doze, and when he exited his tent he found Lulah stirring a stew of the leftover rabbit. She looked edgy and nervous, and she barely acknowledged him when he sat on his saddle beside the fire.

“Have you slept at all?” he asked.

Lulah shook her head. “You could?”

“A little.”

“Daylight makes me more nervous,” the Serian said. She dished a portion of stew into Ramus's bowl, then stood, strolling slowly around the camp while he ate. “There's no real threat, but my guts ache, and I know there's something wrong.”

“You've seen or heard nothing?”

She shrugged.

“Then we break camp and go on. I'll lead your horse and—”

“I won't be sleeping until I feel better about this.”

“That may be a long time,” Ramus said. “You've not been here before. The Pavissia Steppes is a strange place. Have you heard it called the Land of the Lost?”

Lulah shook her head.

“It's a Voyager name. Foolish, perhaps, but it shows how uncertain people are about traveling this way. Many have vanished here, and not every disappearance is due to marauders. Some have witnessed their traveling companions fade away in a blink, as though passing through a doorway from Noreela to somewhere else. Others have fallen victim to rokarian traps.”

“Rokarians?” Lulah shook her head. “Myth. There are no plants big enough to eat a person whole.”

“True, I've not seen one myself,” Ramus said. “But the Pavissia Steppes hides its secrets well.”

Lulah fixed him with her eye, then shook her head and looked away. “I'd still rather stay awake,” she said. “If the time comes when I
have
to sleep, I will.”

Ramus thought of the parchment pages he had hoped to work on again that morning. But as they packed up camp and he hoisted his backpack, he did not feel sorry. There would be plenty more nights, many more mornings.

His dream of the Widow's warning sang to him as they rode out.

HE COULD SMELL
the blood from a long way off. Lulah glanced back, but he nodded at her before she said anything.
Maybe this is the wrongness she was sensing.

The Serian stopped her horse beside an ancient cairn. “I'll go on ahead, on foot. I don't think it's fresh.”

“You can tell that?”

“You stay here,” she said, ignoring him. “Behind the cairn. Keep the horses quiet. And take this.” She unwound her weapon roll and handed him a small crossbow. “You have your own knife, yes?”

Ramus nodded. He felt uneasy holding the crossbow, yet he could see that Lulah would not allow him to return it.

“Going for a look.” She tied the horses' reins to a stone protruding from the cairn and then stood there for a beat, tapping her hand against her thigh.

“Lulah?”

She looked at him, tight-lipped. “There should be at least two of us,” she said. “I can't watch my own back.”

“I'll come and—”

“You'll give us away.” She looked past the cairn, then up at its summit, maybe twenty steps high.

“You said you don't think it's fresh?”

“Doesn't
smell
fresh.” She climbed carefully, testing each foothold before transferring her weight from stone to stone, higher, pausing twelve steps up and lying flat against the stones.

Ramus wondered briefly which Chieftain or clan leader was buried beneath the stones, but he had already seen the opening where a barrier of sticks and mud had once shut the tomb. Someone had looted the cairn long ago, and he doubted there was anything inside but dank air.

Lulah slid back down to the ground.

“What did you see?” Ramus asked.

“There's a building half a mile away,” she said. “It looks like a small temple of some kind, though I can't tell to what.”

“And?” he prompted, sensing that there was more.

“Bodies,” she said.

It's a temple to the Sleeping Gods,
Ramus thought.
I know that already. It's inevitable, and I've fooled with curses I cannot know. It's sensing me, it knows I'm coming and its marking my route and giving me warnings I cannot read on these old pages.

Such thoughts shocked him, but they did not feel as foolish as they should.

“We
should
go around,” he said. “Head east for a while . . .”

“I suppose that would be safest,” Lulah said uncertainly.

They stood in silence, the rising sun reflecting heat from the light stones.

Can I ignore such a message?
he thought. Lulah was staring at him, aware of his discomfort.

His head throbbed suddenly, as if something was moving inside his skull, and as he swayed he felt the Serian's strong hands grasping his biceps and changing his collapse into a controlled fall. Sweat ran cool, daylight shimmered, and then he could see clearly again. A brief burst of pain, but a reminder nonetheless.
Time,
Ramus thought.
I have so little.
He held on to the stone charm around his neck and craved the moons, but felt foolish doing so.

“No,” he said at last. “No, we must go on. If this was marauders, hopefully they're long gone.”

“I'm not so sure,” Lulah said.

“There's no time to go around! We have Nomi at a disadvantage, but they'll catch up. She won't give in.”

Lulah sighed, then nodded. “You hide in there, I'll check.” She pointed at the tomb.

“You'll not leave me waiting for you in an old tomb, empty or not! I'll come with you. Besides, you can better protect me at your side.”

“But your head, your—”

“I'm fine.”

“I saw lots of bodies, Ramus.”

“I've seen dead people before.” He stood without her help, untethered their horses and was the first to mount. He thought he hid his queasiness well.

HE HAD SEEN
dead people before, but never ruined like this. Ramus stopped counting after fifteen. Piled against a wild hedge some distance from the bodies were several dead horses, fleshy gashes gaping pale in the sunlight where rain and dew had washed away dried blood.

Beyond the bodies was the temple. And as he suspected, it bore all the characteristics of an ancient building raised to the Sleeping Gods, even older than the temple they'd visited in the ravine. There were carvings in the stone plinth—words and symbols both known and obscure—and evidence of a gully dug around the outer wall to channel worshippers' prayers downward.

The blood of the dead was splashed up its sides.

It has painted itself red so that I can see it better,
Ramus thought. His heart was racing, and his head seemed clearer and more certain than ever.

The temple was set in a stand of trees. The base of its walls was stone, several steps high, and above this the walls and roof rose in roughly hewn timber, bleached by weather. The carvings in the stone were splotched black with dried blood.

The bodies crawled with ants, beetles and flies, and many of them had been chewed by larger things.

It knew I would come this way,
Ramus thought, but even then his panic was being countered by something that seemed to bear more sense.

“Definitely marauders,” Lulah said. “The dead wear no jewelry, and there are no children.”

“No children?”

“The marauders trade them as slaves,” Lulah said. “Some marauder clans flay them and eat them alive. Old flesh is tough.”

Their horses had stopped of their own accord, skittish from the sight and smell of the dead.

Marauders,
Ramus thought,
not the Sleeping God reaching for me . . .
His doubts swayed, rising and sinking. “But the militia said there was no marauder activity close by.”

“And what do they know, sitting fat and drunk in their border building?” Lulah said. “Try telling that to him.” She pointed at the closest corpse, a man whose throat had been sliced to the bone. His eyes had been taken, and his death grin was stretched by days of blazing sun and nights of withering cold.

Ramus looked again at the old temple, and the blood smeared across the carvings. He could see no bodies close by—they had all been dragged away from the building to be killed—so whoever had spread the blood must have done so on purpose. No accidental splashes. No dead falling against the stone and leaving their final mark there.

A message from It to me, a warning, a guide, a sign, an acknowledgment—

“Ramus?”

“The temple,” he said. “None of them were killed close to it.”

Lulah shrugged. “So marauders have their superstitions as well.” But she looked warily at the temple, as if it had more to tell.

“We should leave,” he said. “The stench of death and blood is heavy here. It's upsetting the horses.” He kneed his mount and turned away from the slaughter, but as he trotted toward a shallow dip in the land where a small stream found home, pain erupted behind his eyes so powerfully that he thought they had ruptured, his vision scorched away in a blinding light. He cried out and reached for his head, pressing the heels of his hands against his eyes. His horse darted to the right. Ramus fell.

HE IS STANDING
on a low ridge, from which he can see all around, and he knows that he is alone in all of the Pavissia Steppes. There is no other human here but him, and no signs that there ever have been: no walls, no old hedges, no scars of campfires, buildings, chopped trees, ruins, cairns or trails. He is long before or long after the time of humans in Noreela, and to the south the sky burns a palette of reds, purples and maroons. He feels at once insignificant and the center of attention, but the attention of what, he cannot tell.

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.”