Fallen (29 page)

“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 working 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?

“Nomi!” It was Beko, kneeling beside her and supporting her shoulders with his hands.

“Stay away from it!” she heard Rhiana say, and Noon appeared in her field of vision, wielding his sword as though it could help.

“Don't . . .” Nomi said, “. . . don't let it . . . please . . .” She spat again, trying to void her mouth of gritty vomit. Beko helped her sit up and she clasped his hands, relishing their reality.

“Stay back, Noon,” Beko said.

The shape fluttered here and there, like a butterfly looking for somewhere to land. Nomi suddenly perceived a repulsive sentience about it, and a sick humor in every skip and swerve.

“It knows me,” she whispered.

The wisp floated away, expanding between blinks into something the size of a horse, featureless, dark and blank. As it retreated, it crushed flowers and rolled across heathers. The path it left behind was marked by plants fading from purple and green to brown and pale.

“It's just a thing,” Beko said, and Nomi almost laughed.

“A thing?”

The wisp flicked back to a minuscule taint on the air once more, seemingly without passing any size in between.

“It's laughing at me,” she said. Beko tried to let go of her shoulders but she clasped his hands, holding him there. He was keeping her in the world.

“What the piss was
that
?” Noon said. The Serian sounded scared, and that did nothing to settle Nomi's fears.

“Marsh wisp,” Rhiana said. “The things that don't exist.”

Nomi felt the tall Serian looking down at her as she spoke, but she did not return her stare.
More than I know,
Nomi thought.
There's so much more than I know. I didn't believe in them, but they don't need my belief to exist.
Some of what Ramus had said to her came back with a sting. Perhaps she
had
restricted herself by only choosing Ventgoria for her voyages. “I
am
a searcher of new things,” she said quietly, and Beko slipped his hands out from beneath hers.

“We should get away,” he said. “No telling when it'll come back.”

“What did you see when it was over me?” Nomi asked.

“It was like you had a bit of night around you,” Noon said. “What about you?”

“Nothing,” she said. “I saw nothing.”

“SO, DO YOU
want to hear about my eye?” Lulah asked.

They had stopped for a brief rest just after midday, and since then they had ridden hard. Lulah had gathered some bread mushrooms, moist and wholesome, and they had been eating as they rode. Ramus chewed thoughtfully, dwelling on what had happened and what may come.

He fumbled his last mushroom and watched it disappear in the grass.

“You're sure?” It was a foolish response, but Lulah had truly surprised him. Strong and silent at first, it seemed that being away from the crowd had allowed her to lower some of her defenses.

She turned in her saddle and smiled. “I don't offer something like that unless I'm sure.” She untied Ramus's reins from the back of her saddle and he kneed his horse, riding alongside her so that he could hear better.

“It's relevant, isn't it?” he asked. “How you lost your eye.”

“Made me the way I am, and that's why I came with you.”

“You said you'd tell me when I finally translate these pages.”

Lulah's expression grew dark and Ramus, looking at her from the side, found it strange being unable to see her good eye. It made her inhuman. “I think you're close already.”

“There may be a Sleeping God on top of the Great Divide,” he said. Rather than feeling annoyed at blurting out the secret, sharing it suddenly seemed to lift the weight from his mind and ease the pain behind his eyes.

“You didn't have to tell me that,” Lulah said.

“You're going to tell me about your eye. Just sharing trust. We've got a long way to go together.”

“A Sleeping God . . .” she said, trailing off and looking away from him, across the Steppes. She was quiet for a while, and Ramus tried to imagine the thoughts turning over in her mind. Superstitions, fears, doubtless a hundred questions. “I knew that already.”

“You
knew?”

“I'm no fool,” she said. “I saw its image on that parchment. There are people in a village in Cantrassa who worship such an image.”

“They worship a Fallen God?”

“Fallen?” Lulah said, frowning.

Ramus shook his head.
She doesn't know the name. But that doesn't mean anything.

“I'm traveled, Ramus. I probably know more than you think. And I promised you my tale, so I'll save my questions until that's done. Most of them. But here's one: Does Beko know?”

“I'm not sure,” Ramus said. And truly he did not. But he suspected that Nomi would tell Beko if she had not already. She was willful and confident, but not very strong, and she would want him on her side.

Lulah suddenly laughed out loud. “This is more than just a voyage, isn't it?” she asked.

“If there
is
a Sleeping God there, it could be the final voyage. Some say they were the First People; others, that they molded the land, and only went to sleep when it was ready for humanity to follow them on. But it's also said that Noreela is theirs, and we are merely tenants. If such knowledge awoke, the Age of Expansion would end, and Noreela will be known to us.”

She nodded, still smiling, and then began her own story.

“ I’M NO KONRAD.
I can't spin a fine tale like him. Rhiana too, and Ramin, you'd have heard their stories if we'd stayed together. But not all Serians are natural storytellers, though we have that reputation. And when it comes to my eye, I don't dwell on it too much, and speak of it even less. But you should hear why I chose to come with you and not stay with Nomi. I understand betrayal, and pain, and the stuff of friendships.”

“You told me you have no friends.”

“I don't now. But I did once. You and Nomi . . . that all seems so complex.”

“I barely understand it myself.”

“My own friendship—and the rules that governed it—was very simple. He was a year younger than me, and just to begin with there was romance and attraction. But that soon became far too complicated, because he was really only just getting to know himself. He had doubts. Sometimes he was attracted to me, and at other times he had trouble deciding why he was attracted, because his heart and mind were telling him otherwise. I valued our friendship enough to talk to him about it and suggest we ease away. It wasn't too difficult for me, and I thought he'd found it equally easy. We saw a lot more of each other, got on very well. We went on hunting trips to The Foot, the island north of Mancoseria, and there we fought golden pythons the size of five men. We took their heads and ate their meat, and we became a good hunting team—one of the best. We spent much of our time with each other, until I took my seethe-gator. After that, things went sour.”

“That's your mark of adulthood, the seethe-gator,” Ramus said.

“Yes, socially, at least. There are Serians as old as I am now who have never taken a ’gator, for one reason or another. They're not the easiest of animals to kill, and though there are thousands of them, it does sometimes happen that they become cautious and elusive. It comes in waves. We've never pretended to understand them; we just kill them, before they kill us.”

“So some Serians never reach adulthood?”

Lulah frowned. “It's not that simple. It's acceptance and standing that are affected. A Serian who takes their ’gator when they're in their teens will likely have a comfortable life, respected and involved within the community. Either that, or they do as I did and travel to Noreela.”

“Come to make your fortune,” Ramus said, a smile in his voice. He was pleased that Lulah laughed softly before responding.

“There are some who say that, yes. But most of us know there's no fortune to be made. It's more a case of broadening horizons, seeing more of the world. Mancoseria becomes a very small place when you have to kill seethe-gators simply to protect your people and cattle, rather than to prove yourself.”

Lulah took a drink from her water skin and passed it across to Ramus. He accepted, swilling the water around his mouth to clean the dust from his tongue and teeth. He said nothing, eager to hear the rest of Lulah's story.

“His name was Pargan. A strong boy, but he faced a lot of prejudice when he told his family he and I were only friends. They wanted their son to take a wife and have children, and when they realized that was unlikely, they shut him out. When I took my seethe-gator, he saw that as a betrayal of our friendship.”

“Why would he believe that?”

“He thought I wanted to leave him behind. He transferred his family's prejudice onto me and painted me in their colors. However hard I tried to convince him that he and I were still friends, he took my ascent into adulthood very hard. And seven days after I killed my seethe-gator, he killed himself.”

Ramus was stunned. Ever since meeting Lulah he had been convinced that there was some tragedy in her past, something to explain the physical evidence of her missing eye and also her coolness and detachment. But believing in some vague tragedy and hearing the facts of it were very different.

“You can't believe that was all because of you,” Ramus said, and Lulah's head snapped around, and she fixed him with her eye. “I mean, you were his friend. He can't have
really
thought you betrayed him.”

She shook her head. “No, I don't believe that at all. This stud here . . .” She tapped her eye patch and the star embedded within it. “This is for Pargan's father.”