Fallen (34 page)

“These are the dark lands,” Lulah said as they stood on the shores of the great river. “These are places untraveled.”

“Not untraveled,” Ramus said. “Simply unknown. Doesn't that excite you?”

Lulah smiled at him, and it was the first time she had shown him anything other than resentment and fear since Konrad's death.

THEY CROSSED THE
river and moved on, Ramus driving them with his silent sense of urgency. Lulah never questioned his swift food stops, his early mornings, his insistence that they cover another few miles before making camp. She rode with him, and as time went on Ramus began to believe that she really was the kindred spirit he had sensed before his words had turned Konrad to stone.

Every evening, after food and before sleep, he studied the parchment pages, fingering the charms about his neck—the bone, the stone, the fingers. He filled his journal with notes and observations, and Lulah watched from a cautious distance. He never revealed what he discovered, because in truth there was little to reveal. More words that he dared not speak. More sentences that held no meaning for him, but which perhaps would turn air to glass, rock to salt, flesh and blood to something more terrible.

Yet these words held no fear for him. He remembered them, and sometimes when he was alone he whispered them to the wind.

What did frighten him were the frequent references he found to a Sleeping God gone mad. And one line in particular that said,
Never wake the fallen.

A DAY AFTER
fording the river, Nomi and her Serian riders entered the first of the great forests. Some rumors held that much of the uncharted area to the south of the Pavissia Steppes was wooded, and that was part of the reason it remained uncharted. Such landscape was notoriously difficult to negotiate. At first, they found rough trails worn between the trees, but these soon vanished as though who- or whatever had made them had simply faded away. They took to wrapping their lead horse's chest and front legs with their leather groundsheets so that it could force its way through thickets of brambles and ferns, forging a path for them all to follow. Sometimes the going was easier, trees more spread out and the spaces in between taken with grass or purple and green moss. Other times the route became completely impassable, and they either had to turn back and retrace their steps or push left and right.

Some of the trees here were huge. Their trunks took thirty steps to walk around, and their heads were hidden so high in the canopy that they could not be seen. Thick creepers hung from tree to tree high up, swaying slightly even when there was no breeze, and Nomi saw fleeting shadows passing along these fine connecting lines. The Serians saw them too, and they looked up nervously every few beats, weapons ready. Sometimes Nomi was sure they were being followed at high level through the forests, though the shadows never resolved themselves and the followers never came.

They found several fruits dropped from one of the highest trees; round, spiked things, as large as a human head, that seemed to pulse with inner life. One of them had extruded several spiny limbs and was slowly hauling itself away from its parents' shadowy influence, searching for somewhere new and sunlit to sit, take root and grow. Some of the fruits' spines were home to dead creatures: rodents, large insects, even a few birds. The skin below these pierced animals was a bright crimson, and the spikes throbbed as they ingested blood and guts.

Many of the trees seemed to have much of their root systems exposed aboveground. Long, thick roots snaked up to a hundred steps from the trees' huge bole, and behind several trees the travelers found wide drag trails. The evidence was compelling, but though they camped close to a tree for one long afternoon, they saw no signs of movement.

Ramus would love this,
Nomi thought. However much she tried, her old friend would not leave her alone.

The trunks of lightning-struck trees were often home to giant fungi that grew in wide, thick plates. Ramin carved a slab from one of these growths, but threw it away, cringing at the smell and wiping his hand for the rest of that day. The fungi displayed holes here and there the size of a fist, and Nomi saw an occasional spiny leg draw slowly back into the darkness as they passed.

The landscape was not at all even. The forests covered hills and valleys, and sometimes deep and deadly ravines were spanned and camouflaged by thick creepers and vines. More than once the lead rider stumbled and almost fell, and it was more the horses' instincts than anything else that saved them.

They found occasional signs of wanderers: old campfires, shelters built between trees, a platform constructed up in the branches that seemed more permanent. But they saw no one. Every sign they found was old, and if there were wanderers still traveling these parts, they were keeping to themselves.

And there were dangers other than the lie of the land. One morning, Noon was stung by a huge wasp, a creature the size of a small bird, and when Rhiana brought it down with an expertly fired arrow, it spat and spun on the ground, wings kicking up a storm of leaves as its stinger slapped into the soil again and again. It took Beko's boot to silence it fully, and then Rhiana sliced off its sting and squeezed the remaining poison onto a wide green leaf. Noon had already fainted by then, and the lump on the side of his neck was swelling rapidly.

Nomi felt useless as she watched the Serians work, so she sat behind Noon and cradled his head in her lap, making sure he could feel her touch on his face. She talked softly to him, hearing only moans and hisses in return. His skin grew hot.

Rhiana did something with the poison. She gathered fallen leaves, selected the few she wanted, chewed them into a paste and dripped wasp poison into the mix. Then she added a few pinches of stuff from her belt pouches. Nomi could not see what it was, and she did not ask, because the concentration on Rhiana's face was absolute.

A hundred beats after Noon had been stung, Rhiana knelt before him, short knife in one hand and the leaf holding the dark green paste in the other. She looked up at Beko and Ramin, her face stern with concern, and then pricked the swelling on Noon's neck. Blood gushed out, followed by a clearer liquid that seemed to have small shapes swimming within it. Nomi blinked quickly and bent to look closer, but the fluid had already soaked into Noon's shirt.

Rhiana nudged her aside and pressed the leaf to his wound.

He screamed for a long time.

THEY STAYED THERE
for several hours while Noon recovered. His screaming dwindled to a cry, and the cry to a deep, troubled sleep. When he finally came around, the wound on his neck was little more than a vivid spot, and his skin had returned to its normal temperature. Rhiana showed him the wasp that had stung him and he examined it for some time, either fascinated or disgusted.

After eating, they moved on. Noon was weak but eager to continue, and he rode the rest of that day beside Rhiana, their bond obviously close.

_____

CAMPING IN THE
forest was a nerve-wracking affair. By day it was filled with the sound of birdsong, the hum of insects and the surreptitious rustle of small creatures in the undergrowth. There were dangers—they saw more of those huge wasps, and for one long afternoon they passed through a ravine crawling with snakes—but during the day at least they were mostly visible, and avoidable.

By night the place changed into somewhere else entirely. Insect noises grew from a hum into a loud, persistent buzz, tone and volume changing as clouds of flies parted to make way for larger, less easily identifiable creatures. They saw things with wingspans the length of a person's arm, and the canopy above them was briefly lit by a vivid display of orange and yellow flames. Roasted nuts pattered down around the camp, and the shapes swooped down and plucked them from the ground almost too fast to be seen. A few were left, smoking aromatically upon fallen leaves, and when the buzzing shapes had departed, Beko collected some and handed them to Nomi. They tasted gorgeous, still warm and sweet from the cooked sap oozing from within.

Noon was still recovering from the sting, so he was allowed to rest, but the other three Serians took turns standing guard. One would stay nearby, close enough to be seen by the light of the campfire, and the others would creep into the forest and perform slow, cautious circuits of the camp.

Things called, screamed, cried, yelled, howled, bayed and buzzed, each species doing its best to outdo the next in volume and persistence. Bushes shook leaves, branches whipped back, and several times in the depths of the night, the sound of trees splintering and falling was clear in the distance. One creature—Beko identified it as a bellows ape—cried like a newborn child being slowly murdered. It was a shocking and wrenching sound, even though they knew it came from an animal and not a dying child. It bore down on the whole camp and made sleep next to impossible, and when dawn came the next morning, Nomi was still exhausted. Her sleep had been intermittent at best, and she felt ill-prepared to go on. The sun seemed to rise on a different world—a forest more inimical to humans than the day before, and more determined to eject them from beneath its sheltering canopy.

They moved off that morning feeling the comfort of known places slipping farther and farther behind.

HE IS IN
the forest and it has sprung a trap on them, luring them in with the promise of mysteries too enthralling to resist, serenading them with the songs of nature, gathering them beneath its protective canopy so that the sun cannot witness its crimes. And now that dawn has come, there is no let-up in the monstrous sounds of the dark. Animals screech to one another way above the forest floor, sharing secrets that no humans should know or could understand. Things move just beyond his vision, dashing through the undergrowth with the padding of many feet. He hears them, but by the time he looks all he can see is a waving branch or the flutter of a few leaves drifting slowly groundward. Farther away trees are uprooted and thrown across the forest like leaves on the wind.

Something is coming....

He senses this through Nomi's fleeting nightmares, and he looks around desperately to see whether there is anything here he needs to know. Beko is sitting across the camp, his visage shimmering in the heat from the campfire. The other Serians are out of sight somewhere, and that realization brings a scream from the forest, and then something splashing down onto the waning fire. It's the torso of a Serian, arms, legs and head ripped off to leave streaming wounds that paint the forest red.

Before the screams can begin, something huge rumbles into the camp, shattering trees, crushing everything before it, and it is a monstrous thing made of stone, crunching down on six legs, head higher than the tallest trees, and it only has eyes for...

“NOMI!” RAMUS SHOUTED.
He snapped awake and sat up, pressing one hand to his mouth to prevent another cry. The camp was quiet and the fire small but strong, and somewhere out there Lulah was circling the camp. He had decided not to sleep in his tent tonight because not seeing his surroundings made him feel even more vulnerable.
Nomi,
he thought,
what nightmares you share with me!
He supposed he should have felt elated that he scared her so—the stone thing coming at her through the trees was testament to that. But did she really think of him as such a monster?

It could have been worse. He breathed long and deep to quieten his thumping heart, and gave thanks that Nomi did not fantasize about Beko. That was one dream he had no desire to visit.

Being here seemed to be focusing Ramus's mind. Though the sickness was ever-present, ranging from a dull throb to a bright white agony, he seemed able to think around it, applying himself to problems without his creeping death putting a barrier in their way. Eight days in the forests now, and he spent much of his time whilst not traveling examining the parchment pages. He was building a vocabulary of words that he still did not quite understand, and sometimes he whispered them to the breeze, a leaf or the insects that landed on his arms. Little seemed to change, but he knew that somewhere in there lay something vital to the voyage.

How the Widow would so love to talk to him now! He was sad that he would likely never see her again, but he was also content in the knowledge that she would champion this voyage and be pleased to see him upon it. And perhaps one day the repercussions of what might happen south of here would reach her in her mountains.

My killer is in these forests,
Ramus thought.
She rides through, expecting to beat me to the Divide, expecting to gain the top first, find the God.
But the Sleeping God was guiding
him
in. It left his dreams to him, whether they were his own or Nomi's skewed visions. But it gave signs to his waking self. Some words he read from the parchment were held within the twisted boughs of trees, spelled out by the fall of certain leaves, cast into the sky in cloud formations that whispered to him when he saw them through the forest's ceiling. Shapes in chaotic undergrowth spoke in languages he could not understand, but their underlying meaning was clear to him, and so he followed, closing in, nearing the goal of this, his final voyage, and all the time he learned the parchment words that one day could mean so much.